


Children of the Stars

by TheLightdancer



Series: The Phoenix Multiverse [1]
Category: Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon | Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon, Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon | Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon (Anime & Manga), Warhammer 40.000
Genre: Alternate Universe, Crystal Tokyo Era, F/F, F/M, Silver Millennium Era
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-22
Updated: 2020-07-09
Packaged: 2020-07-11 13:22:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 43
Words: 125,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19928752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheLightdancer/pseuds/TheLightdancer
Summary: The story of Tenoh Haruka and Kaioh Michiru, and the broader element of the interweaving of and within the overall franchise has a lot of room for deconstruction, and for a more 'realistic' depiction of various elements. In this tale, old familiar elements see the interweaving of light and darkness, good and evil, free will and predestination, and the cycle of the decline and fall and rise and restoration of empires told anew. In ancient times and elder days did mighty warriors bestride the Galaxy, and now, in the waning years of the 20th Century of the Christian calendar, what has vanished for a millennium into the pages and histories of time itself begins to be born anew, and things have learnt to walk that ought to crawl.





	1. Happy is the tomb where no wizards hath lain

THE SILVER MILLENNIUM, MIRANDA CASTLE:

In the last years and the last months and days and hours, premonitions of the end of the great era where humanity had expanded from the Lunar Kingdom had troubled the three Outer Senshi. They were old, as were all of their fellow Senshi bar their princess, named after their mother, and they had served for many and many a century, fighting against the terrible creatures that lurked in the realms of space. Humanity's hold on the nine worlds around the star Sol were so very fragile, and the immortal super-women who shielded that empire, the shining swords that scintillated against the high and remote infinite darkness of Chaos herself seemed such paltry forces.

Certainly they seemed so to the brooding Uranus, who knelt with her sword in its scabbard, the despair and anger and frustration leading her to a taught jaw, eyes that flashed with thinly buried but useless rage, and a cracked ground beneath her. All that they had done, all that they had done in the five hundred years since they had succeeded their mothers and predecessors as lovers, to boot, all of it was ending. She could feel the death of the Lunar Kingdom, the vengeful hordes of the Earth rising to drown the airy and ethereal lunar realm, but she was a soldier. She knew her duty, however much it left her feeling sickly and ill, useless. Wasted. All that power, all the storied songs and battles that had awed the Kingdoms of Uranus and Neptune, which however much they might have despised and feared one another, knew that in the love and unity of the souls of their Senshi was their shield. That humanity's fragile claim on the infinite realms of space was not something so easily won, and that fighting the love of the reincarnated renewing souls born in ash and fire and refined as gold to die in fire once more was a waste in futility. Fate, not choice, had decreed this.

"So we come to this," sighed Haruka, as she looked with broken eyes at Neptune and Pluto.

"So we come to this. A thousand year empire won by terrible battles and grown to greatness falls because of a foolish girl and a foolish youth trying to weld a breach the same way that Michiru and I have. What justice in that, Setsuna? If we, if the souls within us could but shield our worlds so effectively, how then is it that we have won all of these things and an attempt to seal the breach between Terra and Luna has turned into..." and she gestured to the sight of the savage battle, of the decay of the Lunar Empire that haunted them all "This?"

"Three of us, Haruka, against the weight of fate and an army of worlds," Neptune spoke, her fingers steepled against her nose, mirror at her side sparkling with strange light and the sound of rushing waters. 

"We are mighty, Michiru, we have fought against greater odds." 

"In numbers, not the decree of fate." 

"Love is our great strength, and it is their great damnation. What sense in that?"

Meiou Setsuna, the immortal Sailor Pluto whose own cruel fate was to be immortal and to transcend time and space and to watch the manifold forks, steering them down paths that they were meant to go, only gazed in a sorrowful look. "It is the will of fate, against which even Gods fight in vain, Haruka. I have tried a thousand thousand ways to prevent this and all those efforts ended here. We can fight fate, oh yes. Absolutely. But fate always wins and it will always win and then we will be left in misery and ashes then as we are now."

Haruka and Neptune surged into battle, shouting their battle-cries and the sword flashing as the Youma hordes began to quail before the Haruka's brows furrowed more deeply and her taught jaw gritted her teeth as a snarl. And then with a single moment as Neptune stepped toward her, Pluto's teleportation caught them both, and they came to the last battle and day of doom when the Silver Millennium was in its death throes. In their hands, unthinkingly, were their talismans, the mirror and the sword, each pulsing with an ancient light. Before them a girl with a stoic look, black hair and stunning violet eyes, and a great glaive in her hands, sparking. Knowing what fate decreed for the Silver Millennium, this but redoubled the vengeance and desperation of the Senshi, each seeking not to live but to seek an ending worthy of soldiers. The bellowed shouts of _Deep Submerge_ and _World Shaking_ and the rays of the wind and the deep blue serenity and destructive consuming power of the Seas reduced the hordes of Youma by but a third, but the will of Chaos would not be denied. 

For all that they had slain two more took their place, and it was thus that both Michiru and Haruka found themselves impaled by weaponry of that eldritch power that lurked at the center of all that was or would ever be, silent screams and bloody grins of pain, feebly struggling on the blades, then cast off as Queen Beryl, her eyes glowing with the power of Chaos, strode forward. 

Michiru and Haruka's last motives and impulses were to crawl to one another, to seek company in and with each other's embrace. A bloodied hand and an arm that oozed blood around a visible bone that protruded rubbed against an equally bloodied side, and their last words were spoken in synchronity. 

_I will be with you beyond the end of time, and I shall find you again._

Sailor Saturn strode in the land of the dead, seeing the image of Queen Serenity, whose power was such that not even the will of Chaos could full gainsay it, and as the Queen held aloft the Crystal, the Silence Glaive alike was raised. Beryl and with her Chaos, shrieked a silent curse and wailing against the whim of fate and in a flash of light and a soundless aether-shriek the Silver Millennium died, the phoenix falling into flame and shadow. 

EARTH, 1996, Tokyo: 

Michiru Kaioh awoke as in a trance, seeing the dream. For comfort she reached out to her desk drawer where there was so much memorabilia of Tenoh Haruka that her family genuinely believed herself a danger to that young woman and had forbidden them contact for reasons....beyond the limited views of tolerating two girls in love together. Certain pictures, especially, that she was proud of herself for having secured, data, her birth certificate, so many things. In her drawer she found a pen, an object that had not been there before. With a trance-like state she grasped it and gasped in awe as the power of Sailor Neptune flowed into her, awakened. It was the later hours of the night and on the TV, the VHS of _Godzilla and Mothra: Battle for Earth_ echoed with the theme of the monster Godzilla a continual thrumming of drums and instruments in the background, and she then heard a wet sound like butchering. 

_Neptune Power Make-up!_

In her full regalia, Sailor Neptune stepped out cautiously. She gasped in disgust and horror when her foot stepped in blood. The blood of her sister, with a shadowy demonic figure that was hidden within the light save that it had too many eyes and fangs visible, chewing on her entrails. In a single shout the life that had been Kaoiu Michiru died with a 

_Deep Submerge!_

Wrath and power incarnate erupted outward, and the daemon became an unconscious elderly man, as the sound of Sacred Springs with its beauty and tragedy echoed behind her, and she sank to her knees in sorrow. Her parents had not loved her, but nobody deserved.......

It was an unusual case kept quiet by the family's lawyers, yet none objected to the coverup of the mysterious death and cannibalistic murder of the Kaiou family, nor could they explain what seemed like the claws and bites of a vicious animal and the unconscious elderly man covered in their blood. The man was placed in a mental hospital where he would remain in a coma, the nature of his affliction unknown. 

EARTH 1996, Nagasaki: 

Tenoh Haruka awoke that same night haunted by a fragment of the same dream. A broken arm's pain grasping another person, a woman at that's, side. Her own shoulder grasped by another hand, and a whispered strangled: 

_I will be with you beyond the end of time and I shall find you again._

In the background played the film _Gamera: Guardian of the Universe_ and the words "The last hope, Gamera. We bestow it beyond the cradle of time. May it awaken to fight the shadow of evil." 

There was a sound in her house, that did not belong there and a feeling of a repellent, malignant evil. A wet ripping sound, and while Haruka had had her difficulties with her family, she had no inclination of facing whatever truth had lurked behind the melancholy sad dreams, nor with her mysterious aqua-haired stalker. She had met her a couple of times. Kaiou Michiru, a woman with undeniable skill with the violin, and haunting eyes that carried with her flashes not in the night but the broad and warm light of day of a castle and a sad woman who'd fought endless battles in the deeps of time. A dead empire, fallen and forgotten, the Ainu tongue spoken in the Outer worlds as Yamato was in the Inner. 

Tenoh was that rarety, a woman of proven Ainu descent and heritage and proud of it, Kaiou was Yamato, yet in spite of all the other barriers, flukes of fortune had made most of the Tenohs proudly Yamato. Of course most of them, reflected Haruka as she found a baseball bat she'd had from an old flirtation with softball, did not have dreams of a dead empire and of a past life that were haunting and terrifying. Or maybe it was a story waiting to be born. She shrugged. Her family knew their heritage, but they had become Japanese in all but that heritage, and the bittersweet elements of success were not lost on her. 

She stepped out, and the sound echoed from her parents' room. 

Then she looked in terror at the sight of a Youma, though she did not know that was what they were called, that stood on a bed covered in blood and entrails, gnawing on the right femur of her mother, flashing terrible eyes at her. In a scream of rage she hurled a bat and such was the rage that she felt she hallucinated a voice shouting: 

_Cosmic Sword Blaster!_

But that could not be. It did not make sense, bats did not become swords, her mouths would not form so childish a phrase suited to the American superhero or old stories of the Yamato. And yet when that bat struck the Youma it did not hit like a bat, it pierced like a sword and the entity fell, bloodied. A young woman with very dark green hair and eyes of equal color and for a moment the image of her stalker crossed her mind but no, she knew instinctively this was something else. Something.....she did not stay but gave in to the first time to the wheel of history and destiny, she ran, ran faster than anyone had run before. 

A policeman saw her and she took him to her house, and then he knelt on the ground hurling his guts out at the sight, not questioning the baseball bat nor how in a room and a house without a sword wounds equivalent to that of a Western-style sword were inflicted in the chest and back of the young woman. Nor how the wounds had closed and she had entered a deep and endless sleep from which she would never awaken. 

As with Kaiou Michiru, so was Tenoh Haruka at a very young age given wealth and a burden that she felt herself utterly unsuited to bear, where Kaiou Michiru grasped immediately the benefits of securing everything and no longer being watched. 

Haruka wiped her eyes and gazed at the heavens with determination. She had been helpless then, but if her nightmares were to become even partially real, she would always be faster. 

She muttered in a soft, low voice: I am the wind, and nothing is faster than me. 

In English, a language that she'd learned from her father, she muttered a bit of doggerel from a very strange book she'd read and despised as a kid, ironically one of the songs from a book she'd felt over-abundant in them, slightly modified: _None has ever caught Haruka, she is the master. Her songs are stronger songs and her feet are faster._

TOKYO, THREE WEEKS LATER: 

When both had finished the surprisingly hasty but nonetheless efficient work with the Japanese bureaucracy, little appreciating that the powers that be saw the murders of two such wealthy and prominent families on the same night as a potential to spur fear and terror, and not questioning it in the sorrows and traumas of their experiences, Haruka moved quietly into an apartment in Tokyo, near what would be her school where the wheel of fate would turn again and destiny's siren song began its ethereal wail. She was tunnel visioned on making her new apartment livable, and on budgeting enough to rely on takeout, knowing only too well that too much of a diet of her own food would give her food poisoning at best. It was Michiru, rehearsing for her first concert of many that would help her make her own fortune, who saw a news report, the very first to note the existence of another like herself. 

_Today, the mysterious Sailor V defeated a supervillain, a real life supervillain, whose dreams of mind control show that reality has indeed become fantasy. She is no Ultraman, nor is she like the American Superman, but the super-woman exists and she is Japanese!_


	2. The Nephilim were on the Earth in those days

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sailor Neptune begins her career and high school, trying to balance the life of a student and a Senshi. Haruka Tenoh, at that same school, seeks to outrun destiny as the winds made manifest herself, and Sailor V finds herself facing the Dark Agency with an unknown ally, as the Dark Kingdom itself seeks to grapple with a new and strange world.

D POINT, THE NORTH POLE:

Queen Beryl hated this new strange incarnation. The multi-planetary kingdom of 8,000 years ago, the one her bargain and that of her mistress, Queen Metallia, had made with the entity Chaos a long time ago, had fallen. Humanity had once bestrode worlds and now it barely grasped the surface of existence. Not for the first time she regretted the bargain, the element that had crept in with Metallia and her oozing power from Chaos. All of that glorious, destructive force and she had failed to overawe and claim Endymion, heir of Earth, for herself, nor for that matter to remake the nature of the universe in the image of the Dark Moon. She knew that two Senshi had returned with her. The Goddess of Love, of the formerly beautiful Venus now a terrifying volcanic hellscape uninhabitable, and Neptune, one of the Outer Senshi. As far as she knew there was no guarantee because two of them had returned, that all of them had.

That annoyance, the Venusian, had toppled one of her agents and broken the silence of infinite centuries. Humanity collectively was in shock that superhumans and monsters existed, though there were early jokes about the nature of a superhumanity that resembled the modern schoolgirl uniforms of the islands of Japan. Yet there were Youma in the United States and in other countries as well. In the first cases they had actually awoken in the superpowers of the Cold War, an awakening that had but predated the Senshi as a whole, skulking and hiding and doing terrifying deeds in the dead of night. Mortals were found as drained husks or ripped by vicious animals in fashions that suited no living creature. Animals were drained, and in one case the Youma in North America had given new life to the old legend of the Chupacabra.

And after the awakening of Sailor V, there were rumors of stranger superhumans in the United States, though these were not quite confirmed until much later. Where in Japan the old Senshi of the Silver Millennium would be reborn, in the few other countries that had mystical power awaken the forms were strange and none quite in understanding of the other. It was this which made the initial actions of Youma and the Dark Agency cautious. But it was defeat at the hands of Sailor V with the first of their agents that led them to react in turn in emboldened fashions.

Danburite, the chief agent of the Dark Agency, knelt before her.

"It is my deepest regret, Lady Beryl, that we could not best this first Senshi. She is the Venusian, she is weak. The Outer Senshi that has awoken as yet appears in fuller ignorance of Sailor V, which is at least fortunate. We only face the two, and it is possible to kill them both."

On her throne Beryl sat, leaning forward, with her fingers steepled, the fingers brushing her nose.

"No. Do not seek, as yet, to kill the Outer Senshi. As powerful as she is, there's that damnable web of fate drawn about them. Seek to kill Neptune and you all but guarantee a swif awakening of Uranus. And if we face those two _and_ the Venusian there is no guarantee of an optimal outcome for us. Draw out the Venusian, see what she can do."

"And Sailor Neptune?"

"We have needs to harvest energy. Send only the disposable ones around her, because it is best to keep the Outers gnawing at the iron cage and unaware that they gnaw iron. At least for now."

Nodding with determination, Danburite returned in a flash of teleportation to the base of the Dark Agency in Japan.

He stood before Pandora, whose gaze met his own, and told her: "Go now. You have permission from her majesty."

Pandora smiled a fell smile and soon began her siren song working in and through Japan.

TOKYO, SHIBA KOEN MIDDLE SCHOOL:

Minako Aino was bemused and frustrated all at once. Pandora was all the rage at her middle school, but she could not and did not have any means to watch her show, leaving her frustrated and relatively isolated. The isolation part, to her shame, was nothing especially new. She was, after all, a Senshi. It was not given to Senshi to have much in the way of relationships, Artemis had told her. Only two had that guarantee, but she knew nothing in truth of other Senshi and the references to them by Artemis were muted. Her hands were in her pockets and she walked in a doldrum, her head down.

She heard a giggling laughter and looked up, feeling a strange sense of familiarity and foreboding with a girl with meatball-hair. She snorted with a derisory aspect. As if Usagi Tsukino would ever amount to much. Well, maybe if there was a contest for biggest eater in Japan. Usagi was waxing rhapsodic in what was sometimes speech and sometimes a shrill frantic arm-flapping excitement about Pandora, and against her full understanding Minako paused, her eyebrow raised and an odd protective instinct she did not fully understand. Then the spell broke when someone bumped her in a run to their first hour.

She whirled around to see a shock of bright blue hair and trousers in a blur and a strange sense of connection again.

"Ok....." she sweat dropped, then stopped in her first hour. It was a long, long day of nothing but endless references to Pandora. About that point in time she wished she had a box to stuff Pandora in. She was fortunate, it was her last year of junior high, and soon she would be in high school where hopefully entertainment and standards would be more....mature.

TOKYO, MUGEN HIGH SCHOOL:

That same morning, both Haruka and Michiru began their first high school classes, in Haruka's case, beginning with art.

Her teacher, a Mr. Junji Ito, began with a slide of a classical painting in the old Japanese style. His voice was a surprisingly high pitched, almost nasal voice for such a hulking figure with a thick handlebar mustache. It had a reedy grating sound that made her grit her teeth, and it was all the same a strange motif that caught her attention.

"This year, class, you will be learning the basics of old Japanese art and elements of the modern West as well. Here we have an illustration of the old Japanese artwork, featuring an old theme as well. The Kamikaze, the divine wind that saved the old Japan from the hordes of Khubilai Khan's Mongols. When the wind and the sea met, they shielded Japan from would-be conquerors. The Kamikaze has this original context, and the decision of the.....old ways...to debase that term in reference to the late war was a crime against the Japanese people."

Haruka listened with intensity, then zoned out when Mr. Ito then started providing imagery of manga, like that annoying Cutey Honey series, and zoned out completely when an image of Tokusatsu, a promotional from the 1954 Gojira film was shown. There was an hour's worth of lecture but only those first few minutes held her interest.

Michiru's first class, by contrast, was history, with a Mr. Tomoyuki Nasuhito the teacher. By contrast to Mr. Ito, he was a reedy man with a hangdog expression and thick jowls, but his voice was deep, a basso that held the class spellbound.

"This class will chart the entire history of Japan, from the mythological origin of the Nihonji, to the present. But it will begin with the event that started the history of modern Japan. Destiny rode over the seas to change the fate of Japan."

A slide showed the old artwork depiction of a burly man in an American naval uniform, exaggerated nose and jowls.

"When the American Commodore Perry came to Edo, he was not the first Westerner in Japan. The Tokugawa limited contact to the city of Nagasaki. Our ancestors were not totally isolated, though if you have the misfortune to deal with Americans, they will try to insist to you that your ancestors were living in cage and chipping stone. The symbolism of those great black ships in Edo Bay is the one the world uses to define the first Japan. The mushroom clouds over Hiroshima and the later Nagasaki are the second. They in turn are the consequences of the first, for had Commodore Perry appreciated the fullness of the consequences of his deeds, I believe in his Western arrogance he would still have done them but he might have done them very differently."

"Japan's destiny is that of the seas, because Japan is an archipelago, and it is the fate of islands to be determined by seas. At that point, as far as Japan knew, sailing was where the wind and the seas knew a perfect union, though at that time they could not know what awaited them. Then came the black ships, steaming in on something new and unknown."

His glowering eyes met the entire class, which was only partially attentive, though the references to the meeting of wind and sea had Michiru very attentive, though not for the reasons that Mr. Nasuhito would have probably preferred.

"It is therefore my attempt to show to you that Japan in all her forms is a history that is truly Japanese, but seen in the eye of the beholder. The wind and the sea are our fate and our sword and shield....but they are also as likely to be treacherous, or to act in ignorance and callousness to the merely human factors before them."

From there the first day was a relatively prosaic set of elements of the course. None of the rest of her classes were very memorable, except the art class, where the image of the Kamikaze led to her dreams of that lovely woman in the fuku with the bright and shining sword and memories that were dream and memory in unity of terrible battles in ancient times and elder days against terrible legions of monsters in the stars.

TOKYO, AINO HOUSE:

"Oh come on," wailed Minako. "Why won't this TV work?"

All the hype of Pandora had had her annoyed enough with it to make her curious, but now? Now her parents couldn't even get the TV to work and she'd miss what everyone was supposedly so hyped up about.

As she grumbled and sulked off to study, she started reaching for that pen again. It had been annoying to get in trouble for the cat, and she took a delight that was more than slightly childish in defying that to use the pen anyway, even with the cat glaring at her. She glared back. In the clash of mutual passive-aggressiveness between schoolgirl and talking cat, neither won, but the homework at least got done. And it was in the wake of its completion that the TV was turned on, and out of idle curiosity, the Aino adults decided to watch the show. Pandora for her part was beginning to cast a wider and wider net with each broadcast. First children, then from their pestering, their parents. First tens of thousands, now hundreds. Soon to be millions. And among them were the Ainos, save Minako.

When Minako Aino stepped out and saw and heard her mother waxing rhapsodic to that degree about a person whose show was geared to the younger of Minako's grade set and elementary schoolers, she knew something was wrong. Her mom annoyed her in all kinds of ways. This? This was never quite one of them.

That suspicion led her to grab her pen and to immediately track that energy to the center, the 24/7 station casting its network ever wider.

TOKYO, THAT SAME EVENING, OTA WARD:

Sailor Neptune found herself bemused by the nature of the Pandora craze that was afflicting some elements of Japan worse than others. She'd followed her obsession and was relieved that Tenoh Haruka was safe, and she knew that even with her transformation and her patrols that this was not how things worked. There were no enemies in these people, there was a mastermind. Sailor V was presumably en route to handle that one, she would deal with the Youma she'd traced near the Tokyo waterfront. She'd patrolled quietly, letting herself be bait for it, and had dispatched two creeps who'd sought to grope the youthful girl with well-placed knees to sufficiently sensitive areas that would lead them speaking in falsetto for the next week or two. The trace of evil grew stronger and then.....

The creature rose up illuminated by the light of the moon, eyes and tendrils and oozing drooling malformed shapes.

Deep Submerge!

The attack struck it with an overpowering force and the creature vanished, replaced by an unconscious person. The specter of fear that leapt into her throat about the nature of the monsters she fought paralyzed her then. It would fade with time. For now, the waterfront of Ota Ward would be spared the kind of vision that had ended the Kaioh family. Another job well done, she thought with a cryptic smile.

PANDORA'S BROADCAST STATION:

Sailor V's anger in facing the simpering Pandora was palpable.

"Now now, my dear Senshi, how can you be so frustrated? All I'm doing is giving Japan a new voice, a new focus. A new hope."

"You're a monster."

"Who are you to judge?"

Venus Love-Me Chain!

The blow struck her, and the mask fell. The reveal of the gruesome monster dispelled with the fall of the glamor the power that glamor had worked into it, and nearly a million Japanese people awoke as from a dream, not understanding what awoke them or when.

A set of three blasts of Venusian light and the monster was gone, though her corpse would leave a terrible reek. Deciding that the cleanup would be someone else's problem, Minako teleported out, another victory fairly won.

HARUKA TENOH'S APARTMENT:

Seated in front of her couch, Haruka ate her noodles and rice with chopsticks with haste, not delicacy. The news showcased that Sailor V had bested yet another monster, and that the strange Pandora craze had been the work of another supervillain, this one harnessing mind control powers. Haruka's nose twitched. Superheroes and supervillains were real now. She hoped, without any great expectation that it would be real that her strange dreams would fade. For the first times since her childhood she was beginning to hear a voice, and that voice had a face that was vaguely familiar, but it was another face and another name to someone she was more than slightly weirded out by and afraid of.

She knew Michiru Kaioh, she knew that she'd seen her sometimes following her during the day and once, later at night. If destiny dealt some kind of a tie to that woman, she murmured as she watched the footage of Sailor V slaying the Youma, "Well fuck Destiny, then."

Tomorrow would be another day, and an exciting one. Her first chance to try out for the racing team at school!


	3. Power and Responsibility

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As one Senshi seeks to outrun the wheel of destiny and history, Minako Aino makes her first encounter with the mysterious Ace.

**The Silver Millennium, 8,000 years ago:**

_Haruka Tenoh stood over a field of corpses, breathing hard but satisfied. Blood from the field of aliens before her, the youma and a strange species she had not hitherto encountered was plentiful. The strange species encountered had moved with a speed none save her could have matched, slinging terrible weapons that only she could have dodged. They had sent only a few of them but the youma had fallen to them both, but then the aliens had attacked her, too, for no reason that she could decipher. The only thing out of-and there it was. She smiled and turned, seeing the fuku of the love of her life and of her immortal soul._

_"Neptune."_

_Neptune smiled and laughed in a refined and gentle laugh like a rain shower on a warm summer day._

_"Oh Haruka, always so formal."_

_She never saw Neptune's face, merely a hint of aqua hair and those brilliant beautiful li_ -Haruka awoke in her bed, gasping, shaking her head. The dreams were getting worse. As she looked out the window on the day that would change her life and her fortunes, the winds around Japan changed. From that moment, the winds knew their mistress and knelt before her, as history's wheel turned and she unthinkingly took the first step to embracing what she sought to shun. The day was slow, ever so agonizingly slow. She saw....she saw a girl with aqua hair and eyes and the flicker of the dreams made her seem to blur and a windstorm seemed to sweep the school, though none quite paced it. The gentle and refined smile of the other woman was initially slackjawed awe, then relief with lips together and a deep breath through her nose....then slightly or perhaps more than slightly predatory.

So came the race that day, Haruka Tenoh on a track where unknown to her, the local superintendent of Ward schools had come to check on the two survivors of the family massacres. With him, by an equally strange fluke that both Haruka and Michiru later saw as fate, the athletic director. Haruka had, since the massacre of her family, adopted a very androgynous style of dress, and for this race, to further aid her speed, taken to the first time of binding her breasts, spending the day adjusting to the discomfort and the sensation. Now.....now she was bent over, ready to start, and time stood still.

Galaxies wheeled and died in an instant, a fly beat its wings in infinite slowness. The winds were her servants, the winds......she was the wind, and all the pent up desire to escape, to escape the terrible dreams, the terrible will of fate, the grim and terrifying soldier of days of yore and the tenderness with the woman with that resemblance to her stalker.....when the starting gun came Haruka blurred and was one with the wind and the wind was with her and was her. It was the most spectacular time in Japan's history and the athletic director dropped his drink on the bleachers, gaping in slack-jawed awe.

In that moment and in that day, the rise to fame of Haruka Tenoh, track and field racer, and the extension of this to racing began. It continued when afterward, Haruka was approached by the father of one of the people who she'd left quite literally choking on her dust.

"I've never seen anything like that. It....." he smiled.

"My name is Yoshimutsu Takeda. I own the Formula One racing league. Do you by any chance have an interest in cars or learning how to work one?"

Haruka desired escape from destiny, and figured that in the event that working with her hands and doing something to build, something to construct, not the sinister and terrifying force and apocalyptic battles in the strange wind-strewn desolation of the desert planet.....there she could avoid fate. No Sailor V with a golden fireball could or would be found in a garage, working on the entrails of an automobile. Nodding with enthusiasm she said:

"Hai."

Bowing with the proper bow, Mr. Takeda bowed in turn, and fate's wheel took its next turn. The feat she'd performed that day was such that the very next day, Haruka was put up against elite runners. Men. The finest in all Japanese schools. Again time seemed to stand still, and the impression of a deep and powerful ocean more ancient than the mountains and weighed with the memories and......the winds sang and Haruka again blurred and in her wake the finest racers in the academic institutions of Japan, men or women alike, would see records obliterated. Haruka's time was extraordinary, enough to qualify her, when she would reach an older span, to participate in Japan's Olympic teams.

It was brilliant and it was wondrous, and for the first time in Japan's history, a future Senshi who was not Minako Aino made the national and even international news.

TOKYO, AINO HOUSE:

Minako Aino, Sailor V, was relieved. It was a weighty and an immense burden to be a superhero, to monopolize news, to hear people waxing rhapsodic about herself and to have such pressure to exceed herself. Her battles with Pandora and Narcissus had been the talk of Japan and of the international sphere, the existence, fully proven, of superhumans had proven explosive. She had not asked for this burden, nor for the challenge of being the literal deity Venus, the fires of passion and roiling sensuality that were in a body far too young and suppressed so rigidly that she denied their existence. Only when older, much older, in her case in a further irony last of the Senshi, would she dare allow these things to fully exist. 

For now there were trials in sleep, and relief at the change of burdens. For now she was not, though unknown to her friends and family the talk of Japan. Now there was a freshman in high school, a runner whose record exceeded that of the best grown men, a superhuman feat without proven connection to the Senshi. Haruka Tenoh. The fastest human alive. News footage displayed footage of someone who the newscasters were evenly split on if the person was a woman or a man, and then that blur and the whirling wind that followed it, a wind that almost seemed to sing. It was glorious, in a sense, and it was one of the first elements where there was argument, there was feud, there was disputation about the nature of the miracle. Sailor V was a known quantity, her deeds were mighty but they fit a pattern. Fuku, energy shot, monsters rising, monsters falling. This feat fit more into something akin to Western expectations, and this meant that Haruka began to develop an unintended and unexpected set of fans.

Seeing this and feeling it made Minako so unusually happy that she had her best day at school in a while and even listened to Artemis, for a change, only to face an irony. It was fitting, though neither fully understood this until later, that the first of the Senshi other than Venus herself to make international news would be drawn into contact with another. In this was woven Sailor Neptune's distaste for Minako Aino, a distaste sharpened by her not being involved. And in this, a foe that neither Sailor V nor any of the other Senshi fully understood, a rare enemy unaffiliated with Chaos or more banal crimes.

For Haruka, the day had been a whirlwind, a metaphor that annoyed her because so many of her metaphors were becoming associated with wind. She was a person not a whatever those metaphors seemed to hint. Her latent Senshi senses let her detect a tail, and because of the encounter with the Youma, the first that she had seen, and she did not fully understand then nor close to it what she had seen, she was prepared. She sought to evade what were three aliens in strange armor like a skull and metal woven into the appearance of flayed muscle, weapons of unknown origin at points in their armor.

They moved efficiently, isolating Haruka Tenoh, who prepared to blur. She was not prepared to hear a clearly non-human voice speaking in badly accented, broken Japanese:

You......srrenda....now.

"Like Hell" and as she sought to run, the biggest of the three, a gigantic mountain-thing of flayed-hide armor stepped toward her, only for a flash of light to follow.

One of them barked:

Teleportation? This world is primitive, it has no such technology.

 _Guardian of Love and Beauty, the pretty sailor suited soldier Sailor Venus! In the name of Love, I will punish you_! 

It was not a shout in Japanese, it was a psychic shout in a strange language. The presence of a psychic element caused the three aliens to freeze and look at each other.

Sin Zhee the one on the right croaked in that broken inhuman Japanese.

Sailor V appeared in a brilliant storm of light and fire, and so puzzled and contemptuous were the aliens and distracted by their desire to capture Haruka Tenoh, to take her to their masters to study the unexplained appearance of a true superpowered being in a race not distinguished as far as they knew for this outside a specific context, that they decided to ignore her and move to capture Haruka. A blast of energy struck her from one of the gun-like objects and she froze, her swiftness and hyperactivity awoken by the track making the frozen statue-like feeling that much more torturous. She toppled backward but by then the first blasts of the Love-Me Chain had taken down and quite literally and totally slain one of the aliens, which only motivated the big one to stoop down and grasp Haruka Tenoh.

Energy blasts were hurled out and struck the alien in the helmet, leading him to drop her, and he prepared to fire his weapon and she then eschewed the blasts and quite literally physically body-slammed the alien onto his back, shattering open the helmet. A dark face, charcoal-grey, with a singular slash of orange from above the brow-ridged eyes to the lower right jaw snarled at her with yellow eyes visible. Absent the helmet it spat and roared at her in a language she had no means to comprehend, and she unleashed a sudden wave of glowing energy in a sphere like pattern that slammed the alien's head against the ground, busting it open and literally boiled the other one alive in its armor, causing it to topple and its fingers locked around the trigger of its weapon to register a shot with the twitch of dying muscles. An electric arc lanced out and sheared a hole clean through the street and multiple light poles, igniting several cars, leaving Sailor V triumphant, horrified at the nature of the strange foes, and then belatedly aware of the still-stunned Haruka frozen beneath her.

Calmly, she released a small wave of energy without a clear image of what she was doing and Haruka made a great gasp, breathing hard a few times to get air back in her lungs, then coughing. She leaned up, sitting and looking straight at Sailor V. She smiled.

"You saved my life. Thank you."

Minako flashed her a V-sign, and then helped her up. It was only then that, and she snorted derisorily in a validation of her attitude to the police, that three cop cars showed up with flashing lights. The cops puked their guts out at the sight of the broiled-alive alien's face even partially visible beneath the visor of the skull-like helm, and at the broken skull of the dark grey and orange alien.

Most of Japan found it amusing and strange that something that none of them could understand had yoked together Japan's two headline makers within 24 hours. It would also lead to a very strange first interaction between Sailor V and Sailor Uranus and to a change in the destiny of fate and morality and the decisions of the Outer Senshi none of them could have predicted. Only in Michiru Kaioh's small one-room apartment did a woman curse and fume and throw a chopstick at the TV, spitting venom at the little hussy who'd dared to touch her soulmate and introduce her to Senshi before she could.

Haruka took years to fully understand Michiru's dislike of Sailor V, though at the time all she could think of was the strange fortune that saved her from monsters in armor from another world that had tried to kidnap her, and sorrow that a girl of thirteen was forced into such deadly fights. Most of Japan was in awe of Sailor V. Haruka saw the look of terror on her face and knew only pity, a pity that gave Minako some relief that someone, out there, actually understood a small element of what it was really like.

It was afterward that she met a sterling figure in a tuxedo with a mask, like the supervillain in that French novel she'd read at one time.

"Um.....what are you?"

"I'm Ace."

With his suave voice, Minako's eyes lit up. He was the most wonderful and amazing kid her own age she'd seen, and someone who by the look of amusement and understanding in those masked eyes actually cared.

"And now my work is done."

Minako tilted her head.

"But you didn't do anything."

"And I did it very well."

With that, 'Ace' was gone and Minako teleported back home, spending the next few days confused over who and what exactly she'd seen.


	4. Now Ophelia, She's Neath the Window

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Three months later, Sailor V is in the midst of a major confrontation with Debrine, the architect of the Dark Company, and facing the strange and whimsical experiences with Ace. Minako Aino is making friends with a group of people she never anticipated getting to know, and Haruka Tenoh continues to try to run from the wheel of destiny. Michiru Kaioh, for her part, continues her lonely journey and begins to have a new kind of dream.

THREE MONTHS LATER: 

**The Silver Millennium, 8,000 years ago:**

Michiru smiled at the sight of the Uranian reclining on her side before her. It was such an unusual sight to see, Haruka never let herself just.....stop. Or rest. Not when they were together. They were both dutiful soldiers but Haruka had a core of idealism that Michiru.....had never been able to have, really. Not after the encounter with the strange aliens on the outer edges of Neptune. Not after these things, neither Youma nor as human-like as others had hurt her Haruka and after they had both won a long and bruising battle. Haruka had healed by now, the magic and power of the Senshi making her calm, relaxing, dozing. Michiru leaned forward to ruffle Ruka's hair gently-Michiru Kaioh of the 20th Century with another life, if not another face and another name awoke. Another glimpse of a blonde Senshi with a firm jawline and hypnotic eyes. She knew, at some level, that this was why-she rubbed her eyes. 

She stepped over to her little shrine to Haruka and smiled, proud of her love who was experiencing a meteoric ride. Sailor Neptune fought monsters, Sailor Neptune had cursed her with the terrible eerie dreams of Silence, of the wind whistling over the desolate ruins that had been Japan and beyond it, the entire world, but this? A soldier who was a singular point of light against overpowering darkness was one thing. Two of them were not candlelights against stars, they were stars and they-she shook her head, bowing slightly with an affectionate smile. 

Taking her violin and sheet music she continued to work on her first composition, a melancholy piece at one level, with a deep sorrow, and hopeful at others. The twin poles of her life. Destiny's sorrowful grasp, but also Destiny's bright and wondrous hopes. She slipped into the dreamlike trance where the music was the current of the oceans, deep and profound, the brilliant blue light concealing an endless abyss beneath which wonders unimaginable and unknown lurked. Her fingers worked, the violin played, and it reminded her of an old story she'd read about a musician named Erich Zann and for a moment she felt her violin, too, could hold back the terrors that lurked beyond the walls of space and time. 

SHIBA KOEN JUNIOR HIGH: 

Minako Aino looked with a skeptical eye raised at the firey gaze of Hino Rei. She knew of the Hino family, her father was prominent in singing the praises of Sailor V. Hino Rei was sitting over from her, across four people and two tables and she couldn't place, as she fiddled with her food, the sense of destiny that surrounded her. Her, Makoto Kino, Ami Mizuno......and as she looked over at another, someone who reminded her of herself back when she had seen signs and wonders in dreams and in waking such that a talking cat was just another day. The Odango atama, Usagi Tsukino. Usagi was isolated and alone much as she had been, and it felt so wrong to see someone whose soul she saw blazing with compassion alone like that.....licking her lips in a tic of indecision, Minako took her tray and sat next to Usagi. 

"Hello, my name is Minako Aino, yours?" 

The other girl looked at her in wonder, like one of her dreams had come true. 

"Tsukino Usagi." 

Minako's eyebrow raised slightly. 

"Rabbit of the Moon?" 

Usagi shrugged her shoulders with a blend of boredom and discomfort. 

"Mom named me that after a dream." 

For a moment the two ate in peace, and Minako's eyebrow raised again at the speed with which Usagi demolished a tray while her own pace, by no means slow, dimmed as much as any racers next to Haruka Tenoh. The only one who could even partially compete was Elsa Grey, who without Haruka might have been the fastest woman in Japan. There was none of that element in their interaction, there was a cautious element of two people side by side, and the wheel of fate beginning to turn. 

Awkwardness lasted for nearly five minutes, before Minako asked her: 

"Do you like games?" 

Usagi nodded enthusiastically. 

"Video games?" 

She nodded still more enthusiastically. 

"Want to go to the arcade after school?" 

Usagi's grin widened and she hugged Minako so firmly that she seemed to turn blue for a moment, then gasped and heaved as she caught her breath back. Now both eyebrows were raised and her eyes wide. Only one person other than herself in her acquaintance had displayed such latent strength in 'normal' form. Haruka. Was it? She shook her head. 

She'd had dim flashes of dreams of a woman with hair like Usagi's, but that hair was white and her smile was gentle and her counsel wise, and so strangely parallel to that of the boss that employed her and Artemis to fight that she wondered. Was it the sequence of these dreams that led her to Usagi, or was it a choice of her own will? 

School passed by in a breeze, and the wind itself had seemed to have changed since that race. With Usagi it felt protective, stern, but with a core of rightness and-she shook her head. It was just a breeze. To Minako it felt respectful and sad, and she wondered. Her dreams had once shown her a figure with hair that was platinum blonde and a great sword, to whom the winds on any world had knelt as servants before a king, or Samurai before the Emperor. She called the woman she'd seen in those dreams the Shogun of the Wind, and it was fitting. The strangest thing was that she seemed to be a lighter blonde haired Haruka, but that was insane. She'd felt power in Haruka, yes, a strength that fit someone who was faster than anyone, but it seemed to be just a superhuman kind of thing. Not everything was connected to these dreams, after all. 

The monstrous aliens in flayed-hide armor with skull helms had shown that much. 

These musings were broken when she and Usagi had had a wonderful time in the arcade, playing Galaga, and finding themselves in a competition where Minako ultimately won after four rounds but was impressed at how deftly the erstwhile klutz could move and maneuver when she wished. 

Telling Usagi bye when they walked out, she sensed the pull of another Youma, a creature connected to the Dark Agency. She did not look behind her or she would have seen Usagi Tsukino freeze likewise, feeling a cold shiver running down her, and then yielding to a voice that sounded like her own mother's but much kinder, supernatural, to run. That it was not yet the appointed time. She did not question it even as Sailor Venus transformed in a flash of light and finished with her catch phrase, finding herself facing a shambling horror that had once been some kind of metallic object. Drooling faces of metal that champed and spat, and claws that clicked, feet that stamped with a brutish sound. Smiling with contentment, and confidence, and grace, Venus tried her first move, the one that she'd used well in her first battles to see if experience-

Crescent Beam! 

The Youma exploded and its detritus proved that it was a mash of a vending machine, a post office box, and a car. When she felt the other one and prepared to launch her next attack, a sword lanced out and through the Youma, with its eyes wide and a sense of strange betrayal and bemusement that bemused her in turn. The Youma were monsters, monsters could not-

Ace hurled the youma off his sword and tipped his hat to her. 

"Be careful to watch your back, Sailor V. Never know when a friend might try to stab you in it." 

Hearts in her eyes, Sailor V nearly swooned and then Ace was gone and it was mundane Minako Aino who walked over to her house with contentment. She had a friend, her first true friend, and she did not need her power to see that. Now if only that insufferable Hino girl- 

TOKYO, TAKEDA'S GARAGE: 

Working with cars, reflected Haruka Tenoh, was like nothing else. Here she could slow down without feeling constrained, she felt.....right. She'd learned much about how cars worked, what could go wrong, the easiest ways to repair it. She let herself get dirty and she loved this, because it was a clean dirtiness, the kind required to make sense of the picky and fickle elements of metal and glass, an engine and the person who wielded it. Ever since her dreams had started, her mind felt at times very very old and full of knowledge that led schoolwork to be done fast, and made it no longer the distraction she'd wished. Absent cars, her life was a torturous element where nearly everyone else was too slow, and she lived in a place where they blurred to her as she did to them. And those damned dreams, darkness falling on a world that became silent and cold. She hated them. By comparison the nightmares about the strange things in armor she'd seen were much more comforting, that was mundane biology and psychology reacting to the fear of the unknown becoming flesh and blood. 

On the racetrack too, things were simple enough. She didn't run in the sense that other people did, not after that first day. Her unusual biology performed in ways that no human flesh should have been able to, no lactic acid, defying several Newtonian laws with the greatest of ease. She had become strong too, and realized that the first time she'd gripped a bicycle parking space with white knuckles at a flash of green hair that as it turned out was not aqua, and she'd relaxed....then had seen that she'd literally squeezed the ramp into a thin line between normal scaled metal. It was a feat that fit to her mind more something she would have expected from the heroes and superheroes of the West, not Japan. And it was that which brought her to finishing up with the truck, wiping her hands off, waving bye to Mr. Takeda, and then wondering. 

She'd read once a silly American comic given to her by an American soldier at one point. A man turned into a bigger, uglier green man, and he could leap. She had some kind of super-strength, her body was innately tough enough she believe she could survive a bullet, probably, if not a great many at once. Could she-she leaned forward, stretching for a moment. Then smiled a cocky smile. Of course she could, if she could run at a speed faster than the fastest wildlife on land. With a shout of glee she leaped into the air, leaping over the roof of Takeda's garage, and leaped to her apartment in two more leaps, finding herself on her window, which she opened casually with a very light shove and let herself in, hugging herself with glee. Sailor V could fly, she'd seen that once, seen the lovely girl overhead and knew that Japan was safe. 

She could fly.....but she'd just leaped not one but several tall buildings in a single bound. 

Unknown to her, a youma had sought to confront Sailor Neptune that evening and she had heard Haruka's whoop of glee and seen her leaping into the air and almost flying. Her heart soared and in a _Deep Submerge!_ the monster that faced her was obliterated and an unconscious person left behind to slowly awaken and wonder exactly what had happened to them and why they were there. Then shrugging and leaving to go back to their house, where their spouse and kid nearly gave them a concussion tackling them from worry. 

D POINT: 

"You are taking too much time, Debrine. That girl has wrecked our armies and deprived us of valuable energy. Stop gallivanting around like a Kamen and let her fight you directly." 

Debrine shook his head. 

"Due respect, Queen Beryl, she has done nothing of the sort. She is pruning away our henchmen least able to manage the challenge, and she's eliminated two people who were likely to defect and try to start their own bids. Our overall harvests are succeeding. Queen Metallia will awaken on schedule. A single Senshi-" 

"There is not a single Senshi." 

He turned to raise an eyebrow at Nyan-Nyan. 

"Explain." 

"One of my henchmen was dispatched by methods that can only fit those of Sailor Neptune." 

Beryl's brooding over the curses of fate shifted with an awe-inspiring swiftness into a slack jawed wide-eyed eye-twitching panic, while Debrine himself turned pale. 

"Queen Beryl I did not-" 

"It is not on you to fix this. The Outers are more dangerous than the Inners, especially now, and at this phase." 

She turned from Debrine to Feldspar, a hulking figure whose flesh seemed to interweave with metal in striations of light and grooves. 

"Find Neptune. And Uranus too, if you can, before she awakens. Kill them both." 

Feldspar was eyeless, though he was a hulking mountain of a figure whose body seemed to be the ground and rock hewn into a very crudely humanoid posture that had elements of a gorilla-like flesh. He was not jawless and his jaws formed a very small smile and he bowed courteously before teleporting away. 

She returned her gaze to Debrine. 

"Very well, you've made your point. If there are two Senshi we must keep Venus and Neptune away from each other, as that will awaken the rest. And if that damned princess should awaken and seek to keep me from my Endymion again...." 

He nodded. 

Then teleported away to assume his position of command in charge of a Dark Agency slowly dwindling in power and resources. Venus and Neptune both active. The thought of facing an Outer Senshi with what he had at his disposal made him reach in and find a sake bottle and stare into it and let himself pass out drunk at the sight. 


	5. Tiger Tiger, Burning Bright

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After two months of searching, Feldspar believes he has at last found the unawakened Sailor Uranus. As he prepares to strike toward the twilight hours in a place where Haruka Tenoh's speed and strength will count for less, Haruka Tenoh has The Dream again. Pandora's younger sister, Chibi Pandora, prepares to launch a strike against Sailor V, having enthralled under her a group of men. Destiny's wheel continues to turn and the destiny of humanity begins to change as very old things awaken again.....and a lunar expedition by the United States and Post-Soviet Russia begins to explore strange ruins on the light side of the Moon in a first step to post-Cold War co-operation.

**The Silver Millennium, 8,000 years ago:**

Haruka Tenoh was having the dream again and it was not a good dream. 

She was dressed in what was a strange blend of an outfit not unlike that Sailor V she'd encountered, and a soldier's outfit at one level with impractical-seeming ribbons and the like that did nothing to impair her skills. She was the wind, full, unconstrained, the full power of what was surging within her, all the desperate attempts to run. She tossed and turned, sleep slow in coming as she remembered the look of sadness on the face of the little aqua-haired girl that had been drawn to her, that had offered to draw her. That had, without anyone batting an eye, drawn two fourteen year olds to share a two-week sea voyage on a cruise ship in a cabin together. That part she didn't mind so much, she had started to receive funds from a mysterious patron she never saw and was not hurting for money. The fear of the unknown, of the sense of longing, of everything else that had overwhelmed her since that strange incident two months ago......

She was dressed in that Sailor Fuku and she was facing a wave of monsters in the refined Lunar Palace that had been, now a gutted and pitted place filled with the blood and the corpses of the dead. 

Her friends, her fellow Senshi, they were all dead. Serenity and Endymion, the star-crossed lovers, they too were dead. 

Then a towering mountain-man with swords extending from his hands, eyeless with slavering fangs and swords that pierced through her side and only her Senshi powers prevented her from a total disembowelment, then with inhuman swiftness punctured her through a lung, while impaling Neptune clean through. She crawled slowly, painfully, and hand met hand and eyes met eyes, and those words: 

_I will be with you beyond the end of time, and I shall find you again._

She awoke in the night. That towering mountain-thing had been in her dreams enough she knew it by name. Feldspar, a brutish lout employed by Queen Beryl mutated and swollen with the power of Chaos, a name associated with that Chaos. Galaxia. It was a name that sent chills through her, a fear more haunting than the Dark Millennium. She would have questioned so frequent a dream without encountering a superhero, but afterward she just gritted her teeth and endured the day minute by minute, hour by hour. Something was coming in the night with fearful symmetry and a smile that gleamed like stars in the Heavens. 

TOKYO: 

Chibi Pandora smiled as she looked at the group of just over 1,000 men beguiled by her wink. 

"One thousand men, little Senshi. One thousand men all ensnared by my wink." 

Part of her, she could not deny, was nervous. She had defied Queen Beryl and the Dark Agency to do this, but she wanted vengeance. If she won she would, hopefully, be forgiven. If she lost........well, better to die at the hands of the Senshi than to face the wrath of Beryl or Metallia. 

She stood with her arms crossed, pointing to all the men around her. 

"These are not youma, little Senshi. These are but mere mortal men, and they are mine. My shield and my terrible swift sword." 

Sailor V's eyes narrowed. 

Chibi Pandora smiled in turn, a cold and cruel one. 

"It took me just over a week to amass this many men and to keep them under my control, to get a number great enough to pose a challenge to even one of you." 

"One of me?" 

Chibi Pandora blinked and facepalmed. She shouldn't have done that. She thought that Sailor V knew of Sailor Neptun-then her eyes narrowed and her smile widened. Maybe she didn't-

"You know, Pandora?" 

Her eyebrow raised. 

"What?" The cold snap of her voice was a contrast to the warm light of Sailor V's. 

"You talk too much." 

Crescent Beam! 

The blast tore through her and as she felt her body beginning to melt and dissolve, she didn't scream, simply flashed her a monstrous smile as toxic gas began to emanate. A flash of a Tuxedo and both she and Sailor V smiled for different reasons. Ace was providing aid and saving people, further ensnaring the Love Goddess in something she would not predict or counter, being oh so near and oh so distant at the same time. 

Opening her compact, Sailor V shouted: 

Venus Power, Love Crescent Shower! 

And with that Chibi Pandora melted away like snow before the summer sun. 

Afterward, with the people who could have died immediately from the gas spared, she found herself smiling unashamedly at Ace, who took her hand and kissed it. 

"Another job well done, Sailor V!" 

D POINT: 

Queen Beryl did not condemn Debrine this time, merely gave him an approving nod and the two shared a brief bout of laughter at the thought that Sailor V had merely tied a loose end in their organization and made them stronger. 

Then Beryl looked to Feldspar, who knelt before her. 

"Several million people in Japan with blonde hair, thanks to the Silver Millennium. Several hundred thousand with short blonde hair, because that is the style at this point in human history among a few who seek to emulate, of all people, a track and field star. Forty thousand people who duplicate some or many of the traits of she who was once Sailor Uranus." 

Beryl nodded with ill-concealed boredom and anger. 

"I have found her at last. I do not need to draw out Neptune in any way save going to Uranus, to strike her down. Go for the lover, the lover shall come out in turn." 

Beryl, still impatient and on a fragile knife's edge that could and gladly would cut Feldspar if he so much as made a wrong gesture, gave him a stiff brittle nod. A dark grin crossed his eyeless face and he vanished. 

TAKEDA GARAGE: 

Haruka Tenoh felt it again. That eerie pull, that inner gut-churning sense of wrongness that she'd felt when the monster that butchered her family had slain it, and when she'd encountered a few other creatures. Some, the very least of them, she had dispatched with nothing but a set of lightning-fast super-strong blows and she had taken cuts, to be sure, on her knuckles and arms. And then but a few hours later they were gone and she could not quite explain that save perhaps a highly convincing hallucination. The pull was followed by an eerie flash of light and then another that was close to the garage, something that she did not question then though she would later. 

A mountain rose in the garage, his head only a foot away from the roof. He was a hulking thing with legs like tree trunks and simian arms, and wicked serrated swords. A horrible familiarity came to her. 

"Feldspar," she whispered, seeing the giant from her dreams. 

The entity grinned and gave her a terrible smile and raised both of the swords when another Senshi moved in with a great swiftness. Haruka's jaw went slack. The girl from her dreams, and she was moving with grace, elegance, unleashing a pair of words she lost in the refined grace of Neptune's movements. The massive torrent of water that surged into Feldspar and the creature's howling pain in response to it did not quite so much. 

As she watched Neptune and the monster dueling, the blasts of water-like energy began to rip into the monster's frame and silvery blood began to ooze out and in an eyeless face a sickly brownish-green light began to surge, the power of Chaos itself seeping into his veins. Awed and horrified at the sight, Haruka Tenoh then saw an object like a pen in front of her. 

A sense of horrifying familiarity came over her and with it the impulse to run, but then another shout of those words in that language she understood all too well and that wasn't Japanese or Ainu or any language of the present the sword in the creature's right hand dropped and his flesh cracked further. Snarling, Feldspar punched Sailor Neptune, gashing her arm, and with that Haruka Tenoh began to reach for the pen. 

"Don't! If you do that you'll never be normal again!" 

Haruka gave a sharp despairing laugh. 

"Normal? I was already attacked by aliens for what I can do in track and field matches. What's normal about anything about that?" 

As she grasped it a surge of power flowed through her and she shouted: 

Uranus planet power makeup! 

_Guarded by Uranus, planet of the skies. I'm the soldier of flight, Sailor Uranus!_

Pen in hand she moved with a speed still more astronomical to what the un-transformed Haruka Tenoh could do and shouted: 

_World Shaking!_

A ball of plasma-like light fell upon Feldspar, whose frame glowed and then seemed to swell and melt and alter. 

And it was only then that Haruka Tenoh recognized the fullness of what she'd done and blurred over to Neptune, taking her in her arms. 

"I didn't want this," Neptune sighed. Haruka Tenoh wanted to believe it, but Uranus....

"I've missed you," she said, as she placed a genteel hand on the wound and sent a bit of healing energy into it to accelerate the process. 

"And I've missed you. I........we have a lot to talk about." 

Nodding, Sailor Uranus took Sailor Neptune with her when she was healed, and couldn't resist a bit more revenge for the death she'd seen so many times in dreams by whirling around and kicking Feldspar's decaying face and causing it to burst open. 

AINO HOUSE: 

Minako Aino had felt something very strange a bit of a distance away but not too far. A pulse of great and horribly familiar evil and then the pulse flared out. Shrugging, she went back to sleep. Her parents, meanwhile, ignored the TV broadcast: 

_Today, in a first of joint American-Russian collaboration since the end of the Soviet Union, an expedition has been launched to explore the ruins found on the Moon. Have we discovered proof of alien life?_

_In 1968, it was the discovery of skeletons on the moon that displayed signs of violence and seemed unnaturally well preserved by the Apollo Expedition that became the first controversy over whether or not alien life has existed, or will ever truly exist. While we know now thanks to Sailor V that it does, then the humanoid nature of the skeletons, indeed their physical elements of being nearly-identical to humanity were taken into consideration. But they were not and are not human, because even in a situation without an atmosphere, bones would have decayed. The Cold War prevented humanity making full exploration of what was found there and of the ruins whose locations have been charted._

_Today, Colonel Taylor of the US Aeronautical Force and and Colonel Valery Vostrotin of the Russian Cosmonautical Service are taking not 'one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind' but the first steps to challenge the unknown, and to make a much deeper exploration of an unknown past. It is not known whether or not such ruins are present on Mars, as their presence on the Moon was unknown until the Apollo expedition made a direct landfall and discovered the ruins, which were never visible from space. If such ruins do exist, then humanity may never have been alone in the universe._


	6. Death and Rebirth

TOKYO, APARTMENT OF MICHIRU KAIOH: 

Now de-transformed back into Haruka Tenoh, Haruka strode around with her hands clasped behind her back, face frozen into a sharp expression. 

"We both have dreams of this....Silence....Michiru. What says that you think this means what you think it means? We're evidently sharing the faces, at least, and the memories of people from 8,000 years ago." 

She held up her transformation pen. 

"We hold a stick and we become superhuman beings, one of wind, one of water. We can kill monsters just like Sailor V." 

"Yes, but if you've had the dreams you know-" 

"I know that I've had dreams." 

Haruka's gaze was level with her. 

"Be very straightforward, Neptune. We can do things that would have been the subject of stories not so long ago." 

She looked at her hands, then down at her work-suit, still smeared with grease from the car. 

"I can go from looking like this to essentially a superheroic schoolgirl. That means my dreams are real but let's face it. We transform into superheroes, that doesn't mean that we understand everything." 

She pointed at the wall. 

"Does this look like a castle to you?" 

Michiru shook her head. 

"Do I look like a princess to you?" 

An impish smile and she nodded, as Haruka huffed. 

"Well that may have been a poor choice of words." 

She looked up. 

"I do not believe we gained power like this for the sake of......of nothing at all more with it than becoming super-soldiers and becoming better murderers." 

Michiru glared. 

"I repeat to you what the dreams showed. A world become dark and grey and silent, with us and maybe some other figures I can't identify as the sole survivors." 

Haruka's gaze was level. 

"I will not make something of wonder something of horror!" 

By now angry, Michiru's normally imperceptible face briefly saw an aristocratic sneer cross it before she resumed that normal expression, not that Haruka hadn't seen it all too well. 

"You and I, we do not have a choice." 

"Sailor V-" 

This time the snarl was there and it stayed there and even inflected her words. 

"I don't care what Sailor V does." 

Haruka's eyebrow raised. 

"She's been at this...." 

"I've been doing it as long as she has, why would I reach out to her? She hasn't done that with me." 

"Do you think she knows you exist?" 

"I knew you were Sailor Uranus long before you did! I know you better than you know you." 

"Well I wouldn't doubt that, at least for now. You believed the dreams and did not run from them." 

Haruka squatted by Michiru, her hand resting gently on Michiru's left arm. 

"Tell me, when all this started.....was there a monster in your house too?" 

The question was softer and had an inflection of a cracked voice at points and it caused Michiru's eyes to widen and her face to turn paler. 

"Yes." 

Haruka gave her a sad smile and then first one tear and then more began to flow down her face. 

"I wish I'd had this pen then and been able to save them." 

Michiru's own tears flowed more freely, and she pulled Haruka into her embrace. 

She mouthed the words: 

So do I. 

Then, with her eyes closed for a moment and the tears and mutual grief allowed out after so much suppression, she opened them and mouthed more: 

And I can't allow anyone else to suffer like that. No matter what it takes. 

TAKEDA GARAGE: 

"At this point we must take it as a given that Feldspar is dead and that he failed." 

Debrine looked around, feeling traces of the power of the Outer Senshi. 

"Uranus and Neptune have both awoken, and we do not have, on our own, near the power to confront Outer Senshi. We will have to work at our greatest extreme to prevail against the Inner Senshi if more of them should awaken following the lead of Sailor V." 

As he looked around, he then knelt and spoke a small prayer for the dead in the old Terran tongue, a tongue that he remembered taught to him by a being with swarthy skin and eyes that glowed with a kaleidoscopic intensity, whose size he was never quite able to pin down.

"Now I have to face Queen Beryl's wrath." He sighed. "And then Sake!" His smile lit up brightly and he vanished in a flash of light. 

D POINT: 

"Feldspar is dead?" 

Of all the reactions he had expected to get, a gasp, a slack jaw, hands digging firmly into a throne's armrests, nostrils flaring, and eyes wide was not one. 

"He slew Senshi with centuries experience and he was slain in a first battle with one, if she is awoken at last, and with an inexperienced one who is at best a schoolgirl?" 

Debrine nodded. 

She fumed. 

"Enough games with Ace, Debrine. Bring all that we've got, take down Sailor V. If we succeed in this, the Inner Senshi will never awaken and then we bury the Outers in bodies until they weaken, as we did so long ago." 

Nodding, Debrine prepared to leave. 

"You do have my permission to give Sailor V a lesson in why little children should not play games with their elders." 

Debrine's smile became carnivorous, and as he returned to the Dark Agency, he looked at Nyan-Nyan, Wan-Wan, and Chu-Chu. 

"Nyan-Nyan," he smiled. 

"I intend to give Ace a fitting swansong. And you are the bait for that." 

The catgirl, busy licking her arm, looked at him with a hooded stare. 

"Damn you Debrine." 

He smiled. 

"We are all servants of the Dark Kingdom, my dear. By any conventional human standard, we are all damned!" 

THE RUINS OF THE LUNAR PALACE: 

Colonel Taylor looked around as his suit flashed light. 

Colonel Vostrotin, to his right, did likewise. 

_I don't know what this place is but thanks to the end of Communism I also don't have to fear the Gulag for saying it feels haunted._

Colonel Taylor nodded. 

In his crude and imperfect Russian he said: 

_Right are you, Valery Ivanovich. This place feel not quite like tomb._

Valery Vostrotin gave a sharp laugh and then tried his own somewhat imperfect English: 

_And tomb that have vampire, no less._

Colonel Taylor nodded. 

"I read an old story," he mused "that had the phrase 'Happy is the tomb where no wizard hath lain.' I think the guy who wrote that would probably approve." 

As they strode around, they saw more skeletons and then turned a corner and both of them gasped in shock and horror, drawing their expeditions to them by the sheer loudness of the sound. 

Individual skeletons had been found, the skeletons mostly human but glowing even in the absence of light, which was no standard trait of a human carcass rotted to bone. There was a strange absence where it appeared two skeletons had lain, and footprints in the dust were visible. Someone.....someone had been to this palace before. And two of the corpses were missing. 

"Bozhe Moi" 

"Jesus H. Christ" 

"Yob tvoyu mat" 

The overlapping responses were to a vast boneyard, a grave of corpses that displayed signs of violent death apparent even after all those years. 

Both Vostrotin and Taylor sent a sotto voce message that when they returned to their respective comms stations that Moscow and Washington would need to be prepared. 

TOKYO: 

As the Dark Agency prepared for its greater strike, Haruka Tenoh tossed and turned in one of the two apartments she now shared with Michiru, the bond they shared having awoken and made it difficult to be apart from each other for too long. 

A dream hit her, a great insect, dog, and cat together with......with another creature from that terrible final battle. All of them ganging up on Sailor V, who mighty as she was, might not be entirely together to resist that consistent and continual a set of battles. The dream felt like a warning and then she saw a figure in a white dress with odango hair and hair bright white as the dust of Luna and awoke at 1 AM. Michiru stirred. 

"Haruka?" 

"Tell you about it tomorrow." 

And with that Haruka went back to sleep. More warnings.....but she again saw the figure with the long hair and the white odangos and impressions of speech, of duty, fidelity, service. And of a younger girl with identical hair who seemed as much clone as heir to her mother, and the name: 

_Serenity_

that crossed her lips in slumber. And, had she been awake to see it, that name and a look of wonder and stupefied nature would have been in the sleeping face of Michiru, composure broken. 


	7. Now the Moon is almost hidden

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Michiru Kaioh begins to have strange dreams and a stranger in a strange land begins to seek after old secrets.

**The Silver Millennium, 8,000 Years Ago:**

_Michiru Kaioh gazed into her talisman intently. She'd heard the story, everyone in the Grand Duchy of Neptune had heard the story. The mountain-ship that materialized out of a shimmering portal of alien light, alien scripts on it and the hand that grasped a world with two moons. It wasn't Mars, that much was clear, nor was it Martian. The warlords of Barsoom, the Hino family, had built a great and a splendid realm in the red sands of Mars, a place where the arts of war knew no equal save perhaps in Uranus. Their ships were sleek daggers, no glyphs or symbols, for Barsoom did not waste time on frivolities. Their weapons were weapons of war animated by the roiling fires within molten Martian blood, no more and no less. She'd heard the description enough, with enough frequency, that she knew what and where to look with the mirror._

_Her heart caught in her throat, too, for she knew that the ship that had nearly gotten into a clash with this strange hulk that had appeared and then sailed merrily through the Lunar Kingdom before it cloaked itself near Barsoom and seemed to vanish had carried the love of her life on it, on what was officially a formal visit and in truth was that rare chance for her to be together with Uranus. She smiled at Haruka's personal loanship,_ Seas of Neptune, _and her boldly positioning the symbol of Uranus on it. So like her. Then the shimmering unlight, for there was no other word, manifested. The power of Chaos had an unlight-like aspect too, at times seeming to manifest like great eyes and gibbering mouths, possessing people and mutating them and altering them into dark and monstrous things. But it was the unlight of well, Chaotic nature. This? This was a Faster Than Light technology method of unknown aspect, it seemed like spacetime compressed into light, vaguely and horrifyingly akin to the power of the seldom seen Sailor Pluto, guardian of the Time Gates. Only vaguely for her power, alien and reliant on time as it was, was that of the purity and protection of humanity's great realm in the stars._

_This? This was brutal, alien. It did not work for any kind of harmony, it asserted power and arrogance, as much as did the great hulking ship itself. It was, in full scale, equivalent in height to the great mountains of Terra. The vast and towering Skyhold Mountains of the great supercontinent's center, straddling the realms of its very east and its very south. It was as if one of them with two smaller peaks had manifested, and there were gigantic glyphs as large across as a town of any world of the Lunar Kingdom, glyphs that likewise displayed an inhuman intellect, but fit into no writing system of any known world, nor of any known civilization. To be frank, as she shook her head, this was entirely to be expected. The other aliens known, and the other Senshi, the Star-Seeded, all of them were human or humanoid and there were only so many ways to reinvent wheels. This? This was not human, nor more than vaguely so. The script left her with a distinct sense of unease, and so too the great symbol. A hand, charcoal grey, with a pattern on the back that resembled a six pointed star holding a world that was blue in shape with clouds upon it and two moons. That the world was blue and ringed by orbital defenses of a terrifyingly formidable aspect, lovingly detailed, and the moons by multiple things that were evidently literal weaponized artificial satellites likewise, indicated that this was not Mars, the world of the Lunar Kingdom that had come closest to that appearance._

_She did not know what it was, nor why it left her with such unease. She did hear her beloved, Haruka, Haruka the surprisingly sensitive and innocent, the only one of the Outer Senshi to qualify as such if she allowed herself to think too far down that path, which was precisely what she refused to allow herself to do, issue a challenge in in the guttural tongue of Barsoom, the tongue of war. The challenge was made thrice to seeming silence that left the ship uneasy, and then that voice of inhuman resonance had spoken a challenge that revealed an all too keen awareness of communications frequency:_

**Darhalzunrui Vozhondil Underlan! Arhazanzhu Valzhanzhuir!**

_Those last two words had been heard in an at first low-key frequency but with increasing consistency as things seemed to loom ever more darkly for the great Lunar Kingdom, so near to the apex point of its Silver Millennium._

_As she tried, with inconsistent success, to mouth the words "Arhazanzhu Valzhanzhuir" she recognized that the two words, while words of a speech spoken by mouths were not from any human vocal cords and some of the intonations and the like reflected that anatomy. Then the ship had fired a warning shot of a strange energy across the bow of the Uranian ship, which had taken evasive maneuvers and serenely moved through. The sight of that had her heart in her throat, the awareness that Haruka could have died, could have died and died in the cold of space, without even-_

_"Michi?"_

_The voice was low and soft, a tone that she understood well and at great contrast with the lower and nearly hypermasculine aspect that Princess Uranus favored as one of her whims._

_"Ruka?" Her voice cracked, it cracked like she'd never let it crack before and she placed the mirror down with her usual delicate aspect and leaped to hold Haruka whose face reflected a slight bemusement before she held Michiru equally firmly._

_Then both of them heard the voice of Queen Serenity, not breaking their embrace:_

_"So you are all right, then, Princess Tenoh?"_

_She nodded._

_"I am, Your Majesty."_

_"Good. You and Sailor Neptune must speak with Sailor Pluto and see if she can identify anything of what that mountain-ship means. Chaos takes many forms, but to my knowledge aliens have only one. And whatever it was, this is no thing of Chaos."_

_As they nodded, the Queen's eyes softened and then she said "I need to speak with Michiru alone, Haruka."_

_As the Princess of Uranus broke the embrace with her jaw and face as blank as she could make it, she bowed with a formality that surprised both Michiru and to a degree the Queen, then stepped out of the room._

_Serenity's eyes were soft._

_"You have done such a thing, Michiru. Haruka Tenoh used to be one of the coldest of the Senshi, so engrossed in her work. You have her love in a way that I had never imagined any of my Senshi could do."_

_Michiru nodded, a warm smile crossing her face, not quite noticing that Serenity's soft gaze had become much harder, her eyes seemingly diamond-like._

_"Do not misuse this power, Michiru. Not in this lifetime, nor any other."_

It was with that context that Michiru awoke. Awoke in a bed where she was with the love of her life, who had not as yet done anything beyond sharing the bed with her. She was glad for that, they were both just starting high school and facing a great and a lonely destiny. She still felt at points uncertain if anything of her was real or just the dim mirror of a superhuman being who-she smiled at the sight of Haruka dreaming, then the smile slowly faded as she began to grasp that Haruka, too, was sharing a strange dream, and not one for a rare change of the Silence. 

_Out of the dark she was coming, a blazing woman of perfect power and perfect beauty._

_Soldiers surrounded her, trying to unleash firepower at her, but the speed and the power of Uranus either permitted her to dodge the bullets or deflected them in a windstorm of power that it hurled the men from their feet, leaving them badly bruised, some with broken bones but alive._

_That ultimately was why they must kill her. That ultimately was why they could not._

_Out of the dark she was coming, and beside her to her left a great lump of a man, squatter, but somewhat reminding her of the monster Feldspar, save that he seemed fully human. Bald, a great bushy beard with a clean-shaven upper lip, a very prominent brow. He looked Gaijin, American, perhaps. Or German. His eyes were a bright green, a neon hue that matched for strangeness some of the hair colors and the like in Japan, and then as she dodged and fought her way through a minefield, the man came to an active one and with a calm gaze the mine was literally ripped out of the ground and hurled upward, where brute force detonated it and left shrapnel falling around them. In the light of the mine exploding in the darkness his eyes suddenly turned a very bright yellow and his smile was no longer that of a man._

Haruka found herself awake, Michiru beside her, her hand on her hip. It was a very intimate embrace, though not one that Haruka would be willing to accept past a point, even if she didn't mind the two of them sleeping or cuddling together. That was one thing. The strange dreams she had, what was in those dreams? Too young for that and even if some long-dead sorceress of another dimension had had those feelings and done those things and had them done to her, that woman was not her and she would never be. And Haruka Tenoh-she couldn't think too much like that with the warmth and comfort of Michiru beside her. 

A delicate, calm voice that carried with it the immense and unpredictable power oscillating in light and darkness of the seven seas spoke: 

"Bad dreams?" 

The voice of the wind, calm and genteel and caressing or the howling gale that wrecked houses and roofs responded with a simple, curt: 

"Yes." 

"The Silence? Feldspar? The daimons and having to fight with....her?" 

"No. No. I don't know what it is, I don't know why I see it. See him." 

"Him?" 

"Not now, Michiru. It's midnight, and we need sleep. Let's....try to get more of it" and with that Haruka curled back up, Michiru's arm around her. 

_Out of the dark she is coming, a blazing woman of perfect power and perfect beauty..._

**Cape Canaveral:**

Even as the first reports came in, old government hands noticed a strange pattern. A clear alien starship had manifested in the outer system a few weeks ago, near the Neptunian orbit. A few captures of it by the brand new Hubble Telescope revealed a massive thing too large to seem real, adorned in strange glyphs. A symbol was on it, an abstract thing that was three lines slanted from right to left, a singular shaft extending upward with a set of equally abstract things. The glyph was writing of some sort, and the ship seemed very well armed. Then it seemed to fade into nothingness as it crossed the surface of the planet Saturn, visible for a moment in time in its full size, dwarfed by the sheer immensity of the gas giant but a ship large enough to be seen. It had crossed Saturn and then seemed to literally fade into nothingness. 

Not long thereafter a strange object had been detected by a few satellites that appeared out of nowhere, a craft of strange angles that had what was clearly weaponry of some kind, if not seemingly active, and it had crossed from orbit into the atmosphere unaffected by any burning effect, and made planetfall in a strange location. An attempt to shoot the craft down was launched by F-15 fighters and the craft were struck by energy beams of some kind that didn't give the pilots a chance to scream in pain, only leaving molten metal to rain from the skies. Then the ship had vanished like the bigger one, and no conclusive proof of where it had precisely landed was found. 

It was then, with the uncertainty in high places and the conspiracy theories running rampant on various online message boards, along with the reports of fighter craft attacking something that was clearly extraterrestrial in origin and raining molten fire down over parts of populated areas, that the monsters that had surged in Japan began a strange surge in the United States. A very specific group of people were the ones the government chose to focus on, though in truth the dragnet was a much wider one, the Dark Agency deciding to extend Metallia's awakening by reaping a blood harvest in a society that could not counter it, to undo what the Senshi did indirectly where they could not reach. The people targeted in truth in a sense were chosen at random by the daimons, even by the Dark Agency and the Dark Kingdom, for it was not their will but that of Chaos that secrets be kept. 

Thus was it that it was left to a single scientist, unharmed and unchallenged, the sole survivor of the elements around the second moon expedition and the secret elements therein (oddly few of the public elements or the people behind the actual launches were caught, something intelligence overlooked) to step out of his car, gazing with uncertainty. Monsters were killing people like him. It didn't hurt to be cau-

"Doctor, my name is Irving Christoffels." 

The voice was very deep, deeper than that of James Earl Jones, and the man that spoke it was a massive lump of a man. He was stout, no body builder, but even a quick glance at his appearance in what was evidently a tuxedo of a sort, indicated that Dr. Guillame Moreau had no desire to challenge this....Irving...in any sense nor to place his own life in danger. 

Usually Dr. Moreau sounded generically American, from intense practice. Usually. Instead his Cajun accent came out strong as he said: 

"Who're you and do ya'll have any permission t'be here?" 

"I do not," the voice was a mocking one. 

"I do not, but I do not need it. Those monsters you fear were going to attack around your neighborhood too, as they've festered here around the Gulf of Mexico and parts of the Atlantic Seaboard, but they haven't." 

A lipquirk that didn't meet the eyes followed. 

"I killed them all." 

Cursing in Cajun French, Dr. Moreau decided to get into his car when he felt a grip of iron restraining him and flipping him against the door, followed by the door shutting and locking, his keys slipping, thankfully, into his pocket. 

It was when he noticed that the hands of Mr. Christoffels were by his side and that there was nothing physically doing this that Dr. Moreau's eyes went very wide indeed. 

The silent scream that followed when "Irving" 's eyes turned a dark yellow with the cunning gaze of a predator in the darkness and then the suit was a suit of plate armor whose luster illustrated origins not of this world, as did the massive frame and the eyes were in a face that was no longer a man's. Finding himself suspended he saw a bubble of energy seeming to form around them as the alien pressed a button on his wrist, and he screamed again in silence as a sense of distortion and weightlessness through time and space themselves followed. 

Then he awoke in a starship, in orbit not so far from Earth's moon. It was the starlight that awoke him shining in darkness, absent light pollution making the skies seem alive. He looked down and saw himself shackled, and then as icy fear moved along him with an electric feeling he looked to his right. There stood the alien that had abducted him, and to his shock and then a brief, absurd bit of anger, a significant portion of the side of his car, including half of a tire and the left edge of the front bumper, glass shattered on the ground. The alien stood before him with his hands clasped behind him, back surprisingly erect. No armor this time, now he wore a loose set of trousers and a tunic emblazoned in refined beauty that was surprisingly so for a being that was so brutish. The alien itself seemed Neanderthaloid, uncannily human in several aspects but the differences in others were that much more terrifying, pointy ears, a thick Neanderthal-like brow-ridge with an equally squat, wide nose. A weak chin, but massively built, seemingly to at least four times that of a human being in natural muscle, which meant that was beneath all the rest of that power that had frozen him and let the alien abduct him that easily. 

**Doctor Moreau, purred a voice that was inhuman. It purred in Cajun French, but the accent was not of any Earthly group, and he had an impression it was-you presume correctly, little human. I do not speak your jabbering languages, any of them. What you hear is your mind speaking the thoughts I carry to them, in a voice that makes the most sense to you. I did not speak to you any differently on Tamir III, I but used my lips to give you the impression of speech.**

White teeth shone in a face with a dark reddish-orange beard on a nearly entirely charcoal-grey face, the black cape tied to the tunic now fully visible. This, he reflected, was odd. First these......

**Now, Doctor, you are the only survivor who knew of that little expedition to the Moon in the late 1970s. The sole joint Soviet-American venture, if I have the terms right, and I am not sure that I do. The other country is but a tiny part of the supercontinent and America itself is a name for both. And it was not people from the entire thing there. But I digress. You are the sole survivor who knows what was found. The bones, doctor. The bones and the Shaper Apparatus that your astronauts found when one of them stepped through a rotted portion of the palace.**

The screen behind the alien rippled when the alien clenched his fist and he saw it. The various elements of an inhuman mind that had led to experiments from 1977 onward, experiments that had born their fruit in 1982. 

**Now Doctor, I'm going to tell you a secret, and it will mean nothing at all that I do so, for there is nothing in your little Galaxy that can harm me. Even that Galaxia woman, who evidently is either still alive or has had an identical heritage across thousands of years that is....improbable, could not do it. You and your kind, the Baranir of Tamir III, have such stunted and weak imaginations. You perceive but the tiniest of tiny portions of a single galaxy, with fortunate ignorance as to what awaits you without. You grasped at the dim edges of a civilization that failed when Vozhondil III the Hunter was master of the Underlan Empire and we were free to operate openly. Eight thousand years later it is Syian III, the Regicide. And we, the Arhanzanzhu Valzhanzhuir are still very much present.**

**Arhanzhu Valzhanzhuir is a term in the Imperial tongue, Haragor. It has no direct or easy translation into any of the jibbering languages of this world, Barane. The closest term into English is Architects of Fear. We delve into the deep secrets, and it is this that has drawn us.**

The alien's smile remained frozen, his breathing likewise calm, and his hand clenched as he saw to his stunned surprise the boneyard. 

**We did not know the technology was on Luna, we expected if it reappeared that it would do so first on Terra. Your little space marines were not careful enough, they activated a beacon, then it was either deactivated by design or because some bumbling maggot took a hammer to it unthinkingly.**

An image shimmered in more intensely, two skeletons holding each other, frozen. His eyes went very wide. He knew this, and he knew what was coming next when the alien rooted in his brain and the thought-image appeared on screen. The skeleton on top, with the arm cut off near the shoulder, and the various experiments therein. 

**I don't care, Doctor, about your attempts to re-engineer Star Seed, even if you did not understand what precisely the sctinillating jewels in those bones were. Nor do I care, precisely, why they were frozen. As I said, I can obliterate an entire planetary system with a thought, the little supermen of the star seeds are nothing to me, less than that, even. I care about that technology, and restoring it to us, the Architects. Its rightful owners.**

**If it is not done, you shall face not our starships making planetfall and slaying a few uppity animals that try to challenge their superiors, but that of the House of Underlan and of Xaderavcal the Unifier. And she will deem your world immeasurably tainted and it, and all of you, shall be as though you had never been.**

**You and your kind deciphered just enough to create something with it, or perhaps to remove it, and to implant it in an egg, and making sure the egg was carried to term. An artificially created superhuman.**

Then the smile changed a bit and became one that led the scientist to be grateful he'd taken a piss before he left or he would have humiliated himself. 

**Kindred spirits, if those of apes that jibber at the stars uncomprehending of what they see.**

**Now, doctor, where is the Shaper Apparatus?**

Then that will rooted into his mind further, and did not do so gently or kindly, nor quickly. He couldn't even scream, it was like trying to hold back the tides with a gesture of hands. The mind rooted, the will bored in, and he started to gaze blankly and to drool with his tongue out of his mouth. 

**Ah. How very interesting. You don't know. And you are the only survivor who does.**

He couldn't quite focus, he didn't remember where he was, and then that tide slammed into him with the force of a tsunami and a name was found, a name of the elements that went into the experiment. 

**How very interesting.**

Once more the tide hit and in casual callousness tried, partially and incompletely and crudely to repair some of the damage done, and it did so enough that Doctor Moreau was functional, mostly. Except when he saw yellow eyes in darkness, or a dark red beard, and then he would break out into horrible screams that left his voice hoarse for days thereafter. 

Teleported back to his car, he stumbled and didn't notice or care that it wouldn't start, that cops were en route, that his disappearance connected to the alien craft would make him a celebrity. 

None noticed the lumpish German figure who smiled coldly and amusedly at this, nor that he quite literally lifted up into the sky and flew over to the US Census Bureau, landing around it, donning more firmly the guise of Irving Christoffels. The tuxedo was disorienting but he had a feeling it would not quite do here. Not entirely sure how to do the clothing element properly, it was a garish combination of ripped jeans, a ten gallon hat, and a blank white tee shirt on a body that looked suited to beat up the likes of Schwarzenegger and Stallone and take their lunch money that was his attempt at a disguise. The effect did not produce the same kind of snickers when the cold and terrifying gaze met the people who did gaze at it, and then Irving Christoffels strode into the Bureau calmly, finding exactly what he was looking for. 

**Amara Tenoh** , he spoke in an alien voice. **Resident of Stockton, California. The only Tenoh known to be alive in the United States, and now evidently worldwide.**

As he took the information with him, he made a point of placing it in a sealed element in his left greave, then doubly activating the shielding. Trying to teleport with something as fragile as paper would at best burn it, and at worst infuse it with energies that could do measurable harm. Making sure to blink to activate the low-tier shield from the energies of teleportation he vanished in a bubble that carried with him parts of files and left the equivalent of a shockwave of explosive force in the bureau. 

**Stockton, California:**

Another day in beautiful, scenic Lakeview did not deter Amara Tenoh from walking around with a mixture of confidence and caution. Confidence, because whatever circumstances had placed her in and around that machine had given her some enhanced abilities. Caution because the scars on her legs and side were harsh reminders that enhanced did not mean bulletproof and the ability to survive wounds that were fatal to most did not mean a happy experience in so doing. She did not notice the bubble of energy that formed a couple hundred feed distant, but did notice a car driving by and the gun that seemed to point outward preparing for another driveby shooting of a neighboring house. Preparing to hit the dirt, she and the car in question were most cordially surprised when the bullets were frozen in midair, as were those of the people shot at, who took the time to pull out their own guns and fire. 

Walking confidently between them and allowing the bullets to fall was a massive lump of a man with a bright red beard and the coldest eyes she'd ever seen. 

The scene reminded her of dreams she'd had when she was pregnant with the baby she'd lost, dreams of a nightmare yet to be, and now here. 

She decided to run to see how fast she could go and a hand of iron froze her in mid step. 

**Amara Tenoh?**

The inhuman voice was that of her nightmares, cold and low and inhumanly deep, a guttural rumbling tone not unlike that of the vibrations produced by elephants. 

**Yes, that is who you are. You may be of service to me.**

She couldn't see what was behind her, she only saw a bubble of lightning that arced together and expanded outward in a form like a dome and a horrible sense of weightlessness, suspension in and through time and space. 

**The Time Gates:**

Sailor Pluto had seen a strange thing stepping through time, and a strange element likewise. Pharaoh 90 had sought to seek a different host from the one that ordinary timelines meant he would have pursued. He had sought this and beguiled humans to going to the ruins of the Moon Kingdom, disrupting the reincarnation process that would have seen the bones vanish with the fullness of spirits by taking.....her eyes had darkened then and she'd wanted to leave but it was not yet time. Then Pharaoh 90 himself had but encountered a mountain-ship akin to those she'd last seen 8,000 years ago. She could but barely understand a few words, namely "Architects of Fear" and "We are knowledge, and you are nothing", a frequent boast of the strange aliens of different kinds. Powerful technology had laid low Pharaoh 90, dealing Chaos a blow. And now.....now as the Dark Kingdom, the first iteration of Chaos was rising, the slayers of Pharaoh 90 were beginning to spread havoc in the timestream as well. 

She owed them at least that they had forestalled one rupture, but she had a feeling that this, their seguing into a sequence of things and casual disregard for the sequences of time and space, would reap its own sorrows yet to be. 

She did understand at least that the Architects were not yet in direct confrontation, even if Sailor V had slain two of the non-powered agents of the Architects. 

She caught a glimpse of the future, of the mocking presence of the Architect-lord's father and of a confrontation that was beginning to form. A clash when the Outers would meet all of the Inners and would be bitterly divided, a sorrow and a grief yet to happen as their own confrontations changed, and all of this....all of it laying the groundwork for something else. 

She blinked. There would be a time when she would be able to bend rules, to go forth to help her family, but it was not yet. Soon, though, the princess herself would awaken, and the time of the final clash with the Dark Agency drew near. 

The wide eyes and slightly slack jaw changed to a smile, and then the smile to something more impish with a twinkle in her eye. It was going to be greatly amusing to see what would happen with Sailors V, Uranus, and Neptune working together, even if that was not the original intent of the timestream. Sometimes, she reflected, change was for the better. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As can be seen with this chapter, my take on the Silver Millennium owes a few influences to a couple of other elements of science fiction. This work is intended to at least partially deconstruct some aspects, as well as working with the idea of an Outside Context force that while simultaneously the only villain fought not directly connected to Chaos, has such an alien aspect to it that there is, for all practical purposes, little difference from the perspective of the Senshi. People who've read Miracleman may have some idea where the dreams and the first part of the Outside Context Arc are going to be going. But only some, as Miracleman tells one kind of story very well and there is no need to reinvent a perfectly fine wheel transplanted entirely into another story.


	8. Uranus, Neptune, V: Dark Agency All-Out Attack

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yrvin Heshatani continues his quest for the Shaper technology as Sailors Uranus, Neptune, and V find themselves facing an all out war with the Dark Agency.

**The Silver Millennium:**

_"You have made a devil's bargain, Beryl of Terra."_

_She found herself gazing at a being in armor made to look like a flayed hide, the helm shaped like a skull. The voice was deeply accented in a way that did not seem of any known world. Indeed the guttural undertone and slur made it sound like it wasn't even human. It did not help that the armor was massively scaled and the being was immense, more of a bear than a man._

_"You made this bargain with Chaos, the enemy of all Life. It is not your ally, it will devour you as it seeks to devour existence itself."_

_"Oh come now, you can't know this."_

_"Madame, I am an Architect of Fate, we know these things. We know entities like this Chaos when we see them. Our policy with them is to kill them on sight."_

_"Can you give me the Shaper Apparatus or not?"_

_"I can, and I have."_

_The four-fingered hand pointed one meaty finger at the device._

_"I will still caution you not to believe these promises. Chaos will not give you the prince of your world you crave. It will give you a graveyard."_

_"Is that all?"_

_"For now." The towering figure moved with a brutish stride that was no human gait, as Beryl's gaze flickered uncertainly. It turned back at the door to look at her one last time._

_"Whether or not you duplicate Star-Seed, pray that you meet me at that rendezvous after the conquest of Terra. If you fail, we will come back to reclaim what is ours. And if we do, it will be fortunate for you if that planet of yours survives."_

**D-Point, The North Pole:**

Beryl frowned as her hand rested on a scepter. These days the memories of Endymion and of her desire for him burned ever more brightly. And that of the strange aliens, all forty of them, in that strange armor. She had never seen anything like them, the Youma of what they called Chaos were their own things. Supernatural things, twisted things once men or things of metal and of stone and of glass. Howling bedlam in all its forms. 

_"Chaos will not give you the prince of your world you crave. It will give you a graveyard."_

Whatever abomination had spoken those words in its guttural rumbling booming inhuman voice was correct, in the end. The Silver Millennium had fallen. They had slain all of the Inner Senshi and the great rite to counter the magic of Queen Serenity had blasted entire civilizations into nothingness. Uranus was no longer a desert but a chilled great giant of gas, and so too the other outer planets. Terra's old civilization had fallen, though she remembered with a chill another figure who'd strode the battlefield like a thing of carrion. 

_As she gaze triumphantly at the Princess of Luna, Beryl caught flame from the side of her face. It did not burn like a conventional flame, it rippled with a heat of the soul, not chemistry. A giant in dark golden armor wielded it, his eyes were bright golden fire and where the sword moved, things died a death that was no natural death. The Star Seeds shattered and the things of Chaos she had summoned rushed it, howling a single word: Anathema. When they had, he had brought up his sword as Serenity did her crystal. Both erupted, one in a massive rolling wave of fire that disintegrated what it came in contact with, soul and body alike, the other a light shining and brilliant and terrible as the false sunshine of the most dreadful weapons of the Silver Millennium._

No reports in this world of a towering golden giant, though she'd found a report that concerned her. In Anatolia, in the past, a gigantic towering thing had erupted from the ground and faced a being of a horrible burning gold and gods had cried war. The creature had fallen and then the figure in gold, the Saint George of the Church, had vanished. The Church of the West called him Saint George. A different report in a strange book called the Howling of Night Daemons had called him The Master of Mankind. Very little known, and there was still less of a flash of terrible-seeming armor and mountainous ships. The Senshi were known quantities, but the resemblance of that strange UFO that had shot down that plane over the soil of the United States.....she paused.

It did not matter. The Dark Agency would crush the Senshi, there would be an end to their meddling, and it did not matter if such beings were real or not.

_**Project Miracleman, Area 97:** _

The sense of weightlessness changed and Yrvin Heshatani and Amara Tenoh found themselves in a derelict place in the interior of the Nevada Desert. 

Amara heard the gigantic lump of an alien in dark grey armor mutter in an inhuman tongue. Not the way this placed looked in her memory, Yrvin mused.

"You know this place, or you used to."

Amara nodded, face pale, a single stiff head-jerk recognizing elements of it.

"Where did they place the Apparatus?"

"I don't know. They didn't tell me."

A single meaty paw in a massive clunky gauntlet wrapped around her throat in a vice of iron. Hefted up from her feet effortlesssly, she looked into those horrid yellow-black eyes. They were in one sense the eyes of an animal, the Neanderthaloid face not helping.

A telepathic probe slammed into her again and it was no gentle look. It was the overpowering smashing force of an avalanche, or a tsunami. Memories flashed and it was as though she lived them again. The horrid experiments she'd seen, the ruined and twisted partially human things. Some with blonde hair, some with misshapen limbs and the monstrous shambling lump of flesh with tendrils and several dozen mouths and scores of eyes and burbling howling a crudely Japanese name. The apparatus itself was a terrible thing, restraints on her arms and legs, and in other places, intimate things that were horrid without imagining.

_**No they didn't tell you.** _

The telepathic voice was low and inhuman, majestic. No deep accent in English or Japanese, a sibilant voice of cosmic power.

**_It was here, you had something done to you with it._ **

That horrid probe, that probe there, the experiments. Five failures, then the sixth.....

**_A daughter. They succeeded. They implanted star-seed in an egg implanted into another egg and you had a child._ **

She was dropped and landed on her back and that horrid gaze held her spellbound, rigid. It traversed lower, and then another roiling wave of force gripped her and she howled in agony.

**_Like attracts like......_ **

The sense of weightlessness grasped her in that sphere and in a sudden lurching motion she was pressed to the creature's chest, his right hand around her. The left clenched a fist and they vanished.

**Tokyo, Waterfront:**

Neither Minako Aino nor Haruka Tenoh nor Michiru Kaioh could place the emotions on the day that began it all. It began when a sudden overpowering wave of wrongness gripped them all and they'd all called in sick to school, quietly making a point to be present around each other. None recognized the other, quite. Minako did recognize Haruka Tenoh, who was quietly leaning against an alley, when she'd detected the presence of Youma. Powerful ones. Not a singular group but many. And to her shock, as she transformed preparing herself to fight, she felt not one but two pulses of energy just like her own. Bemused and wary, she moved as stealthily as she could manage. 

In the course of her adventures, she'd heard the name Danburite, and knew that this entity was the leader of the forces facing her. She'd also had strange dreams on Venus of a figure called Danburite, dreams that occasionally tilted into a strange place that she did not fully understand and was not sure that she wanted to. She knew she was a good luck charm for love for other people. Danburite, the architect of so much of the strange events in Japan, her enemy. Danburite, the figure in her dreams. How to reconcile this? When she turned around she stared. She, Sailor V, was not the only Senshi after all.

"Who are you?"

"Sailor Uranus" said the tall and willowy blonde, her voice strangely familiar and a smile on her face.

"Sailor Neptune" said the aquanette, her gaze harsher and her voice colder, for no reason Minako could understand.

They did not have much time to speak before three entities came up to them., followed by several more One like a feline, one like a mosquito, one like a dog. One a woman in a long dress with an apron with fish on it. And then four more, three who worked in a team and one other. The sense of power was very, strong. And behind them all, Ace. She gasped in delight, thinking all of her allies were together, and she sought to run toward them.

"Not so fast, you little hussy!" The woman in the dress lunged at her. "He's mine!"

She tackled Sailor V, hurling her down as the three youma that looked like animals looked over to the other two Senshi.

"Two of them?" They looked at each other. Chuu Chuu said "Only one's supposed to be awake now."

Wan-Wan snorted.

"Evidently not."

As they lunged at them, two shouts followed:

_World Shaking!_

_Deep Submerge!_

Three Youma lunged at two women. In a flash of a gilded planet that erupted in fire and fury and the roiling waves of the deep waters they were as though they had never been. Snarling, the three identical women lunged at them, seeking to devour their energy. Seemingly bored, the two Outer Senshi launched their attacks at them, and as before, the immense power of the Outer Senshi disintegrated them as though they were nothing.

Where Princess Lin-Lin launched wild haymakers and shifted into a youma with ease. Sailor V's dodges were effortless and skilled, even as the ground cratered around her head. When Lin-Lin overbalanced herself with a hit, Minako shoulder-checked her, sending her flying. Ace calmly walked toward her, removing a sword from a scabbard that flashed.

_Danburite looked at the Princess of Venus._

_Well-met by moonlight, Proud Princess. He kissed her hand and she was older, a grown woman of ageless flesh and beauty._

_He kissed her hand, and then sought to pull her to her._

_"No! Rei won't-"_

_She saw his eyes and then her gaze caught Danburite, right after he calmly stabbed and impaled Princess Lin-Lin. She'd had those dreams, those terrible dreams and then the eyes, the eyes-_

Her eyes narrowed.

"You."

The voice was low and dangerous, the voice of a grown woman and for a moment in time Sailor V was taller, older, the image of Eternal Sailor Venus.

"I remember you. What you tried to do to me. What you did do, that day. The day the Old Kingdom fell."

Danburite backed up, and the rest of his cronies ran toward him as Venus raised her Henshin stick.

"I remember you tried to take me from the love of my life, then used that when you....killed me. Then. You kept me from dying at the side of Sailor Mars."

The older Sailor Venus, the future and the past and the present all in one, in a brief flash of anger and power, stalked toward them all quite calmly.

"You've succeeded so beautifully that you drew to me two of my allies, in a sense before we were ever expected to meet, I think."

Her lip quirked.

"Well, let me show you what you get when you give me the chance to avenge that little poisoned dagger-slice from back then."

_Venus Love Me Shower!_

In a thunderclap and a firey rain the surviving members of the Dark Agency were all vanished as though they had never been, and for a moment the future Sailor Venus looked at the youthful Haruka and Michiru in a smile that was bittersweet and spoke of pain and change yet to come. She vanished and Minako Aino found herself staring stupefied. The Senshi parted in a set of teleportation flashes, staggering into bed.

The three shared a dream.

**Silver Millennium:**

_Well met by moonlight, my Senshi._

_The woman they'd seen but dimly now seen in full. She was very tall and very beautiful, hair of platinum blonde, eyes a piercing bright blue. She was regal, wearing a dress of a dark navy blue that shown with the reflected light of the Sun. Nine of them there were, seen now for the first time in clarity. Brilliant light blue haired Mercury, smartest of them all. A mind smarter than any computer ever built, the strategist of the Senshi. Minako saw through her own eyes but Uranus and Neptune saw through theirs, seeing a Sailor V that looked like the woman who'd burned the Youma away. A warm and radiant smile and an impression of hers of a mixture of love and sensuality and pleasure alike, her hand grasping another's. This one radiated fire and fury, the might of Mars, of old Barsoom. A seer and a soldier, the most adept fighter of the Inner Senshi._

_The Princess, smiling and excited, japering just a bit as her mother favored her with an affectionate smile and some of her soldiers had faces of frozen masks to resist a huff._

_The buxom serenely happy face of the brunette Sailor Jupiter, a brawny woman who was the only woman in raw terms able to match Uranus blow for blow, her eyes gazing at Haruka with amusement even in the mask of frozen grace. Prince Endymion of Earth, whose presence had led the Princess to japer around in excitement and attracted the hostile stares of Mars and Neptune, and a look of longing from the woman who was next to Uranus and Neptune._

_Uranus and Neptune themselves, and then the tall swarthy dark green haired woman to their right, the one looking hauntingly at Endymion._

_Queen Serenity spoke a single phrase and five women and one man would awaken. The ninth was as yet too young to awaken to her power and would awaken to it in a context none could fully foresee._

_My Senshi, my daughter, awaken. The Dark Kingdom rises, and humanity calls._

Three girls in their beds were hovering over the sheets glowing. The glow stilled and their eyes awoke as they landed gently on their beds, Neptune and Uranus, for a moment, looking at each other through the eyes of Haruka and Michiru. They smiled. Now they were not alone. Now.......as the Inner Senshi would begin to awaken and the confrontation with Beryl, who had brought the demise of the Silver Millennium would begin, now....they would have a chance to fight with their fellow Senshi. Perhaps those other dreams, the dreams of the terrible Silence that had awakened Michiru and shown her Earth cracking like dried clay and two horrid yellow eyes, animal-eyes, and a mocking intelligence in that gaze, perhaps they were false futures. 

Dreams grasped each of the eight Senshi and in the land of dreaming they reached out to each other, forming the shadow in dreams of relationships that would be in waking. The next morning Usagi Tsukino awoke to find a strange cat on her bed. That was seemingly part of her dream.

Then the cat spoke and she tried to scream only to have an impulse seemingly muffle the scream into a strange sound and her eyes met that of the, which gaze with a mixture of amusement, amusement and confusion.

"Hello, Princess. My name is Luna."

In a deep dark corner of a US military base, eleven twisted and deformed beings glowed likewise, and their eyes burned not a bright teal the way Haruka Tenoh's did but a horrid burning red and a rumbling began to echo. Old and forgotten things began to bay under the light of the moon. In a starship, an alien looked to the unconscious and thoroughly mentally probed body of the human woman who was in a slurred drooling unconsciousness and smiled. At last, now he knew where to look. Sighing, he went over the woman and squatted beside her, and a surge of energy went into her head and then a name occurred to him.

He smiled with a terrible amusement. This Dark Kingdom would keep the Senshi busy with plenty of time for him to establish a corporation, to ensure that his loose ends were done, and to find a sufficient cover story. If what the stories of the old days said were true, and these things were influenced by the power of Chaos, and these new Senshi were to awaken.....his hand reached out to the woman's skull and a pulse of healing energy led her to convulse and scream, erasing from her mind all memory of Yrvin's presence and of his starship, and then he felt for the mental presence of the woman's daughter.

With a grin of terrible amusement that reached from ear to ear Yrvin placed the woman on a teleportation homer and then sent her to Japan. He did not care, the Shaper Apparatus had been found. Technology first. Then one by one, each of these loose ends. No witnesses, no creations.

"And last of all, the little Senshi of the Wind," he muttered in a calm voice, seated on his command throne, hands steepled, telekinetic energy visibly glowing in a bright blue set of sparks.

"Death will come for you, Sailor Uranus, and it shall bust open the gates of damnation for you and for all your wretched sisters." His smile widened to an unnatural Glasgow Grin proportions.


	9. Well Met by Moonlight, Proud Serenity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Usagi Tsukino meets a talking cat and learns of a great secret. Professor Tomoe discovers that some things, once discovered, are best forgotten.

**Tsukino House:**

"So....you're a cat. That talks." 

Artemis nodded. 

"I am." 

"And I'm....a princess." 

"Yes. You had that dream, no?" 

"I.....I did." 

"Good. Then you have some understanding of what I'm about to try to give you a very, very bare bones understanding of based on all that I have for.....myself, really." 

A cat should not have a humanlike sheepishness or such a strangely human-like smile but Artemis managed. 

"In ancient times and elder days humanity was not.....what it is now. Then, magic was active, it was glorious. Humanity was like all other species in the Galaxy, most of which are very directly human and human-like. Only two are unlike you in full, one very massive and green, one slender and bone-white with pointed ears. And a few minor races that have never really amounted to much. In those days magic was everywhere and the earliest humans made contact with the stars in the era before modern science says the first humans met other archaic species. They too commanded a kind of magic, but it was raw, primitive, destructive. It carried them to their own extinctions. Under a dynasty from Luna, or the Moon, an interlinked group of powerful immortal sorceress-queens built a unified human kingdom in space. From Mercury to Pluto, each of the nine planets had such a figure. Pluto is the only one I never met in my lifetime, she is....tasked with a great burden. 

Uranus and Neptune were the sword and the shield of the Solar System, they fought against the forces of the Great Enemy. Tirelessly, ceaselessly. They were never meant to fall in love, though a love that was as great as yours and the prince of Earth would prove to be burned between them. In the Silver Millennium, the last era of the Old Worlds, the last Sailors of Uranus and Neptune broke those vows. More precisely, Neptune chose to break them and Uranus chose in turn to accept that and the prices it would carry. Neptune in turn encouraged the Princess Serenity of the age to pursue her Endymion, and Uranus, in spite of no love lost between Earth and Uranus, chose to endorse the same. All of the Senshi, the immortals who command this power, are women. The princes of Earth could command the power of the Earth, but there is believed to be a reason why its princes are uniquely the only equivalents to Senshi." 

Seeing visions that were as though she was....there, Usagi had her breath taken away at the beauty first of outer space and its smothering darkness, and then the progressive growth of nine separate lights and the one from Luna that linked it all together. Candlelights before the infinite stygian abyss of Old Night. Nine beautiful palaces, nine women, the nine women of her dreams. Some of them were eeriely familiar, like Ami, Makoto, Minako, and that arrogant little bitch Rei Hino. Others......she could have sworn a violinist and a car racer, of all people were there but that was impossible. Wasn't it? And the last, the tall woman with the red eyes and dark green hair and the kindly smile, and the other one, the small one with purple eyes. Dark and cold and ominous and a kindlier smile all the same. 

With that last phrase, however, she saw two figures, monstrous and terrible in one case and haunted and rather sad in another. On the right was a towering giant, fifteen feet tall and clad in opulent gilded armor with a sword that burned with a strange flame that made her eyes hurt. Not like the fires of Barsoom in Sailor Mars, fires that taught, instructed, made clear what was unknown. It was as if someone had caught the fires of Hell and illuminated them on a blade, an ugly thing that seared souls and made them ashes. On the left was a wolfish-looking woman, pale and thin and rangy, with eyes of tiredness and of fear. And vague shadows of other such beings, men, seemingly, all but the one woman. A strange similarity of cheekbones and chins suggested perhaps a paternal lineage of some sort, but the one on the right had eyes of terrible fire illuminated with the same horrifying gilded aspect. 

"This one, we believe, is the spirit of Terra, of Terran humanity. His power is unlike the rest. Some texts in the post-Silver Millennium era speak of this one as fated to become the Master of Mankind in the end when terrible things befall the world, when the good things are forgotten and in an endless age of slaughter and carnage he unifies Terra and the rest of the empire of Mankind yet to be, and becomes Queen Serenity anew, fated to destroy everything to rebuild it. The Great Enemy hates him as much as the children of Luna, and it is him that created the strife between the worlds. He believes, and still does, that only slaughter and carnage can make the world anew. Luna believed, and hopefully still does, that love, hope, compassion, and change make the world anew." 

Usagi nodded. It sounded so right, but.......

"Who's the woman?" 

"Alivia or Olivia, she called herself when I met her. Strange woman. She said very little but said that she, John, Damon, Archaoios, and the one you see are the Perpetuals, a kindred species, and that she is the only one who wishes that the sundered lines could meet. I did not understand much of what she said, but she told me of the Great Enemy. The Enemy that ultimately brought all this tumbling down." 

The saddened eyes of the rangy woman in soldierly garb seemed to bore into her and then she saw again the nine interlinked worlds, and then beyond it a great and smothering feeling and a terrible light with gibbering laughter and giggling madness beyond. 

"The great foe is Chaos, an elemental fury that is the antithesis of everything the Lunar Kingdom stood for and stands for. It, we are Order, civilization. It is well, Chaos. Destruction. Not entirely sapient as I understand it. Either a God or a Goddess, or a pantheon, or none of these and all of them at once. Chaos creates the monsters that Sailor V fought, and it is a deadly persistent foe that will never die. And, unfortunately, in the last days of the Silver Millennium it was not entirely alone." 

Usagi Tsukino saw towering figures in armor that looked like a flayed hide, helms stylized to look like grinning skulls. 

"What these creatures are, knowledge no longer says. All that I remember is that Queen Serenity detected a horrid scheme to create artificial Senshi with machines that were not made by human hands. These aliens attacked the worlds of the Lunar Kingdom several times but were not, to my knowledge, directly involved in the fall. There....." 

She saw a tall woman with hair in a U-like shape or like spreading wings of fire and in a purple dress. 

"Queen Beryl of one of the Terran realms of the North fell in love with the Prince of the Earth. She believed that you stole her destined love from her, but in truth you and Prince Endymion, when you meet him, are the ones destined for each other. Now and into the age of ages." 

She saw then the horrifying dream of death she'd had only infrequently, Beryl and hordes of monsters at her beck and call and the Senshi together falling one by one, and herself remaking and reforging the world anew. 

"You have come back, Princess. So has she." 

Sailor Moon, not Usagi Tsukino, was the one who grasped this as this time in the midst of the horrifying dream she'd felt an object slip into her hand and spoken words of power. Light surged around her and within her and through her, and in purity she awoke, strengthened. Changed. No longer fully human if ever indeed she ever was. 

The talking cat bowed to her, and Sailor Moon, Princess Serenity, smiled in turn and spoke a benediction. Usagi did not die, not then, and not ever. She understood at last the nature of the strange dreams and the hope and excitement of the awakening of Minako Aino, and why she was so drawn to her groups of friends and understood the older two, the violinist and the racer, in ways that they did not. 

As they sat and talked, neither of them watched a news broadcast that reflected an early shadow of a future yet to come to them. Both, however, felt a pulse of a strange energy that was not Youma or Chaos, but something Other, from the worlds beyond worlds and the infinite stars in the abyss. 

**Tomoe Industries:**

"Herr Doktor Professor Tomoe? Ich bin Irving Christoffels." 

Professor Souichi Tomoe turned with a surprised look to see a hulking man with that monstrously deep voice looking at him. The man wore a stylish-seeming suit all in black, had no hair on his upper lip and was bald, but had a thick beard. There was something very wrong in how such a man had readily turned up in his office without anyone informing him, but then he'd remembered the strange flash of light and wondered at the appearance of an eruption of power that had torn parts of his office asunder. 

"Tell me about your dreams." 

Such a strange statement should have seen him object, throw the strange man out of his office. An overpowering force like that of a volcanic eruption made him instead close the door, and sit behind his desk as the figure chose to remain standing. 

"What dreams?" 

"The ones with the planet that talked." 

"Ah. I.....how much do you know? Why do you ask?" 

For a moment the man's cold gaze was yellow, the eyes of a monster in darkness and he felt that pressure intensify by orders of magnitude. 

"I saw a being of glowing darkness, it called itself Pharaoh 90. It spoke with a voice that told me my daughter would die, that I would need something from.....a place in the United States to create something that would preserve her." 

"I see. And what precisely did you find, Doctor?" 

With that he got up, moving in a curiously stiff fashion and the German followed him to his laboratory. He knew that the tread sounded wrong. Whatever, whoever this was that followed him was only pretending and badly at that to be a human. He wanted to run and scream and hide but he could not. 

Taking him to the lab, he pointed within. A vast apparatus with a command throne and a wicked-looking set of restraints, overlapping elements to reshape the bone, the muscle, nerves, the very soul itself. A strange wind blew for a moment and he turned, his mind freed of the terrible force, and gasped in horror. A hulking lump of a thing looked at him with crossed arms, a beard of dark orange hair and splotches on the face that brought out the dark yellow of the creature's eyes. The brow-ridge and squashed wide nose were Neanderthaloid, but he knew that whatever was looking at him was at least the equal of the thing from his dream, if not its superior. 

"Tell me doctor, what exactly did those dreams tell you would happen to your daughter?" 

"She would die, and I could use this, I could use it to put something in her that would keep her alive. A being called Mistress 9, Pharaoh 90's herald. A month ago, the dreams stopped but I've kept working on this device. I......you've seen the reports of the Senshi?" 

The being's blinking level stare followed by a bad attempt at a nod, like a being again making a half-assed job to pretend to be human followed. 

"My daughter....when Saturn is in the skies visible above everything else I've seen a symbol on her head. An astrological symbol. The symbol of Saturn. The glow is that of Sailor V, and I don't know what happens if she ever discovers that, if she ever meets something she cannot survive, that kills her, slays her, leaves me to bury my child. I refuse to allow that. I will use this and I will save her. Make her stronger." 

**So you know what you've found, at least in part, little human?**

That was no longer a human voice, though it was in curiously erudite Japanese, almost the courtly tongue of the Imperial family. 

"Yes. It shapes things, doesn't it?" 

**Indeed it does. It's a much older version of a modern device that let us make Gods, beings that do to entire galaxies what I can do to a planet. So, as I understand it, this Pharaoh 90 appears to you in a dream and convinces you to build a device to reforge your daughter anew, and to remake her?**

He nodded. 

**Well, in that case I shall probably be doing the child a favor then, for any father that heeds the will of Chaos to make an offering to it of his daughter is no father worth claiming.**

Booming footsteps and an inhuman gait followed and the entity raised him by the neck in his right hand. 

**You would subject a child to this, for the sake of a dream. Very like my own father in that. My father made a monster he cannot control that plagues our society and the source of a terrible new knowledge that curses us all. The fools that created that project in the American desert sought to make supermen, old supermen, from the old days. They did not understand what it was that they were doing. They tried to inject elements and compounds derived from understanding of star seed into men. The monsters there are the first ones I shall hunt down and slay after this. No traces, you understand, doctor? You made twisted abominations that threaten your world. Your blueprints and data shall be utterly eradicated and all traces of what you made shall be eradicated likewise. The monsters we Architects of Fear built have become terrors beyond our control. The monsters you have built did not become yours because you understood only a small part of what you were doing.**

**That substance you saw, the one that made your daughter's head glow? It's called Star Seed, a specific form of the human soul. Where multiple souls co-exist, it is something arising from or connected to a single flesh, joining two separate souls without understanding yokes the equivalent of an active nuclear bomb to a flint spearhead from the most primitive eras of your world.**

**I do not do this, Doctor Tomoe, out of some concern for your race or your world. I do it because I can contain and prevent a new infection caused by your kind grasping the fuller nature of what you see dimly, and wielding it.**

As he smiled coldly and cruelly, he saw a young girl with purple hair seem to manifest out of nowhere, her eyes glowing with a low dark violet light. 

"H-Hotaru" choked out Professor Tomoe, and she seemed to glow and levitate. 

**In time, little girl, you will thank me for this.**

With that the alien turned to the Professor. 

**I can shatter a planet, your planet, easily with a thought but you are not worth the effort or the use of my real power.**

His hand flexed deceptively lightly and blood oozed out of his mouth and teeth flew out, part of his jaw caving in and a sickly crunch marked the implosion of his neck. Discarding him, the powerful lump of an alien turned to the glowing girl. 

**Go now while I still allow it.**

And with that he stepped to the Shaper Apparatus, placing two devices on it, and activated them in a process that took him the equivalent of five Earth minutes. In a bright glowing golden sphere, it vanished. Then, standing back and calmly raising his eyes, Yrvin Heshatani's will surged out. Tomoe Industries relied on very explosive power sources to keep the Apparatus running, and Yrvin's smile intensified when he saw this. Telekinetic pressure slammed into them and did so in a way that was simultaneous with the growing fractures elsewhere.

Two women had been drawn to Tomoe Industries by the dreams of the shorter one on the right with her aqua hair. They'd arrived in Sailor fukus faster when the surging energy began to produce a cracked and cracking building and then an eruption of immense flame. A little girl appeared by them, somehow, and looked up at them with bright shining purple eyes. They leaned down and took her hands, and destiny's wheel turned again. None of them stayed to see a telekinetic shield around a tall figure clad in black with a great cloak and animalistic yellow eyes, nor the cold and terrible smile on the entity's face. He had every intention of using this particular area as the metanormal connection here meant it was the easiest real estate to use. Then, and later. But for now........for now he had to ensure that when "Irving Christoffels" began to make his new business that he did a better job of hiding as a German businessman setting up a new place in Japan. 

This surge of energy was registered by Usagi and all the newly awakened Senshi, while the newly awoken Sailor Mars gazed into the fires and saw a strange future: 

_Out of the darkness she saw a burning woman of blazing power and perfect beauty striding. Her short blonde hair and angular face made it clear this was Uranus. That was why the people seeking to kill her sought to do so. It was why they could not._

_Behind her strode in a surprisingly formal and somewhat archaic uniform a German with a thick beard and a hairless upper lip, and then his eyes seemed to meet hers and changed. They were no longer the eyes of a man._

Then the visions of the fire changed and she saw other things, even if she could not quite pace the strangeness that what she had seen had seemed, however briefly, to see her. 

**D POINT, ARCTIC:**

Queen Beryl looked at her various Daimons. They too had felt the pulse of energy in Tokyo, and knew that it was neither their work nor that of Senshi. She looked to her army. 

"Gentlemen, it's time. That damned Princess has been reborn. Now......" her gaze intensified. "Now we will either kill them all or they shall give us enough time to awaken Queen Metallia and then she will. The Dark Kingdom rises!" 

Cheers broke out from her armies and she smiled on her throne, and the smile changed briefly to be unnaturally wide and high on her face, more the leer of a monster than a woman. Her veins seemed to glow with a kaleidoscopic light for a moment, and her smile widened still further. Chaos blessed her, and was her shield. This time it would bring her victory, not a graveyard....


	10. Dreams and Reality

**THE SILVER MILLENNIUM:**

_Serenity strode forward, confidently and excitedly. She was the Princess of the Moon Kingdom, one among countless many in the infinity of space. Out there, Sailor Galaxia was massing a vast and terrible army of Senshi to go to the Cauldron and lay siege to the ever-hungry force of Chaos, to lay low the Immaterial monster, and to bring its ruin. The Sailor Wars, usually between Senshi and Chaos, but occasionally between Senshi and Senshi had been the background noise to reality. Beauty and magic, but terror and everlasting darkness. Not separate, but together._

_None of this ran through her mind, only the excitement and humor of being on the forbidden zone, knowing that in truth nothing was truly forbidden the Princess of the Kingdom. And she saw him, his brown eyes shining, and his smile warm and welcoming._

_'Endymion,' she spoke in the pure language of the Kingdo-_

Tsukino Usagi awoke. Ever since the talking cat had come to her, she'd had strange dreams and flashes of presences. She'd seen girls who looked like the strange women she'd seen in the dream. She'd felt them. Dreams of a shining palace on the Moon, and of Endymion. These were present and these were lovely, and these were wonderful. And dreams of a terrible battle and a demonic force unleashed, and of a towering giant in golden armor wielding a sword of fire, and the horrifying image as life faded with her that he, no it had stalked toward the Outer Guardians for some terrible rite to unleash rebirth, and the horrified gaze of the smaller woman who was always with him. Dreams. Just dreams. So she convinced herself. 

She knew of Sailor V, the superhero. She also knew of the presence of an alien that had come to the Earth, smashed the US military and felt from time to time hints of a monstrous psychic presence easily capable, she feared, of obliterating their entire Solar System with a thought. And she felt the low and terrible electric-heat of things that should not exist, the warped and twisted elements of an old kind of enmity. A Dark Kingdom under its Dark Queen. The Dark Kingdom, the name from those strange dreams, felt all too real, but it felt wrong. A sense of immaterial greasiness, of decay, slaughter, change, excess. Flesh turned and mutilated and enslaved by an immaterial force that was and wasn't alive. And that Other presence, the monster-mind.

She knew if she felt it, each of the other women no doubt felt it too. That made it a little better, made the nightmares less intense. It was an ordinary seeming day, and she was going out with her friend Naru. Naru's mother had recently begun to sell new jewelry and there was a strange thing going on. Where the new jewels were sold, a sleeping sickness seemed to steal on people and they would fall unconscious, sometimes with a strange iridescence in their veins. Naru was in her mother's store, school was out. A lovely day.

Even that annoying Chiba-Brat couldn't spoil it for her. Of all people she hated, none would ever be more enduring to her than Chiba Mamoru. She knew it, she could feel it. He was nothing like Endymion, the shining prince of her dreams. That she was so very certain of.

There was no chill of dawning horror and of destiny's cold embrace when she stepped in. She was humming and hungry, idly wondering how she'd talk her friend into going to a bakery and getting a few treats, which by her standards was sufficient to feed five people but she never really gained weight with it. Something she was too young and innocent to question. A lovely day, and she heard Naru asking questions, and her mother's curt responses.

Then she felt it. The cold greasy chill, and frost seemed to appear out of nowhere and rime the glass, then the moment passed. Naru made a strangled yelping sound and something propelled her forward, feet seeming leaden though an outside observer would have seen a blonde Japanese woman with an unusual shade of true golden hue, unlike the white-gold of Haruka Tenoh and her bun-headed long-braids blur with a speed that was superhuman. She turned to see Naru's mother, hair a blood-crimson hue, holding her against glass, a hissing voice echoing.

The kind of thing from her nightmares.

A voice that was and wasn't hers spoke: Youma.

The creature turned its neck around with a grisly sound, her eyes focusing on her.

_You._

It was a single word and she froze, and then she remembered some of the words that Luna had spoken to her as she tried to parse the dreams.

_You are a Senshi, Tsukino Usagi. You will find a henshin and it will grant you great power. When you see it, you must take it. The world depends on it. And you._

There it was. It looked like a pen and it hung in the air like a star. Her hand started to reach for it, and she stopped. She couldn't. She wasn't a superhero like the Americans created. Dreams were only that. Dreams. She was Tsukino Usagi, the cheerful girl who made any darkness light, who ate enough for an army. The creature was pushing Naru into the glass and she sensed, somehow, that she had mere seconds before Naru started to bleed, and to bleed very badly.

She thought: _I will save Naru, and then I will give this up. No-one should have this power._

Her hand clasped the pen. A bright shining light and it seemed she was suspended in space, dancing. Nude in purity* and words of power were spoken for the first time in ten thousand years:   
  
" _I am the sailor suited Pretty Guardian who fights for love and for justice — I am Sailor Moon! In the name of the moon, I'll punish you!_ "

She stood before the creature, which let go of Naru and raised itself to a towering monstrous height.

_You are a pale ghost of something that died long ago, Senshi. I am Morga, the everlasting darkness. We are Legion, for we are many. And your corpse shall gutter in the hellfires of our bellies._

In shock and anger, she spoke words of power and unleashed a kind of energy that struck the monster and in a shrieking wail she saw an iridescent fire seep from it in the form of a face, and a flash of something very old struck her. A name, half-formed, then vanished. Naru was unconscious, she was relieved. Now how-

Another flash of light, and it was not Sailor Moon but Tsukino Usagi who knelt by her friend and held her, and looked over fearfully at an unconscious, deeply asleep but otherwise unharmed mother.

The somber Usagi that went home felt the initial pulse of darkness lower, and somehow knew those who'd had the energy stolen had awoken, or at least entered a normal sleep when whatever dark force was draining them was removed. That lifted her spirits, but only somewhat. That thing, that Morga, it was-she sighed and stepped toward her house. Even food couldn't lift her spirits when monsters had become very dreadfully real and when she'd claimed some strange power of her own.

Food couldn't, but she found herself oddly grateful for her annoying brat of a brother Shingo and his constantly bugging her. Within an hour and a half the gloom had passed and it was happy, innocent Tsukino Usagi who was chasing her brother yelling at him to leave Luna alone.

OUTER SENSHI APARTMENT:

 _Tenoh Haruka was having the dream again. It was not a good dream. Out of the darkness she was coming, a blazing soldier of perfect power and perfect beauty. By her side walked a German man in an oddly impeccable and unblemished suit. She did not kill, she did not kill mortals. Even like this, even with the strange sword that pulsed with her power. They set off mines to kill her, and a slight pulse of light from the German man's eyes and the mines erupted around them in a shower of light, dust, heat, shrapnel....and they were unharmed. She looked at him in the cloud the eyes were no longer those of a man, they were golden yel_ -

Tenoh awoke, gasping in shock. She shook her head. The dreams were strange, but they were just that. Dreams. Since this Dark Agency had fallen, she had not seen Youma since. She stood up and let herself stare out into space, in the small hours of the morning, illuminated by stars and the lights of a Tokyo night. For a time she was not the mighty Senshi of the Wind, she was Tenoh Haruka, living a normal life and going to school and getting the education she needed. Not a being haunted by memories of past lives and aching emotions that flooded her with memories that were never her own and desires likewise. She remembered the dynamic power of Sailor V and the haunted look in her eyes, and she knew that was not a fate she wished for.

NEVADA, UNITED STATES:

The entity that looked up at the sky in a perfect mirror of Tenoh Haruka's face was near-identical to her, appearance-wise. Her hair, the only significant difference, was a deep reddish-brown, and her eyes were dull, dead. Shark-eyes in a human face, glassy. The kind that did not look truly real. It was the only hint of what led Subject Zero-Two to accept the truth of her existence. A person without a heart, or a soul. Emptiness. Haunted by flashes of a sword, of someone she wished to kill. Someone who'd done this to her. Then a being strode to her in that land between dream and waking and stared for a moment. This was not a Senshi, not truly. One of several dozen monsters made by the superpowers in pursuit of a power they did not understand and could not.

A force within her pulsed and it spoke antisounds that echoed within the heart of the entity that looked to her and gave her a look of pleading and desperation. With a terrible smile Nehellenia offered her hand to it, and the boundaries of Dreaming and Waking blurred, and it was Chaos itself that flooded Subject Zero-One's veins, iridescent fire oozing from her eyes, mouth, nose. A grisly smile with too many teeth followed and then the entity settled into its form. Now this, this was fascinating. The closest success before the birth of Subject Zero. A Senshi in all but the Star Seed, equipped now with a terrible mirror of those powers.

Chaos already knew the Dark Kingdom was doomed to fall, but there was so much else to do and to see. And to burn. Especially out here in the world beyond the ancient islands of the Rising Sun.....

SIBERIA, NEAR OMSK:

It was no German that strode to the first of the thirty-six bunkers that would become the targets of his quest. When it began, the Architect of Fear was confident enough that it would prove a simple matter of dispatching terrible abominations of dark science with a thought. Only thirty-six on a world too primitive to grasp even the crudest principles of faster than light travel. As mighty as he was, the slayer of Pharaoh 90 but dimly grasped the nature of the threats he would begin to face and that his actions would intersect with things that his organization's understanding did not place on this planet, or even in this time.

It was a densely built being from another world, a monster-mind that casually crunched open the door to the bunker with a thought and a movement like a great fist tore the metal as though it was paper. He wore armor, not the gaudier flayed armor of the Architects, though that was sufficient to protect against most threats. He wore the more specialized armor devised from studying the metals of the giant his father had captured and how that metal worked and did not work. His visor was a modified standard variant based on the contemporary models of the Imperial Army. It cast a visible light outward.

Dark here, perhaps the thing was dead. Did these abominations need-

An odor that would have been overpoweringly dead was stifled by the cold. A corpse that was long-decayed, the bones broken and mutilated lay next to his feet. He froze. That he did not anticipate. A low growl echoed and he heard it with senses that were not physical. It did not move as men moved, it was massively overbuilt. Shaggy blonde hair covered a body that resembled a kind of forest creature native to a continent a vast distance away. No creatures like this had hair that color. Nor eyes of a brilliant piercing teal. Nor fangs that were long and serrated and coated in dried blood.

Yrvin snorted. His cousin in her whimsical moods was much worse than this could ever hope to-

It raised itself on its hind legs and then the wind began to howl not out in the Siberian colds but in the chamber like a howling gale and he reflected that this was proving many things in the notes of his organization were.....incomplete.

TOKYO:

Aino Minako froze. She had felt two simultaneous pulses. One was clearly a Youma. But the other....now she was positive she knew what that kind of pulse was. It gave her chills. That was not the kind of energy she was familiar with from the Youma or the Dark Agency. She could not do anything about that kind, not now. The other....she would track it, and she would follow. She knew that there were at least two other Senshi awakened. Yet.....the pulse she'd felt was not the oceanic abyssal majesty of the aqua-haired maiden, nor the gale-winds of the Senshi of the Air. It was warm, a warmth that had been snuffed out once and could awaken again. She blinked. Impossible. If the Princess awoke, it would not be as a Senshi. 


	11. His Eyes All Had the Seeming of a Demon's That is Dreaming:

SHADOW GALAXIA FLAGSHIP:

_**You cannot escape me, Galaxia.** _

She saw her, no....It striding around her. Chaos, the Great Enemy, the lurking fear in the stars. The abomination. Shadow-side of mortals and the Senshi. And flashes of the terrible future, when the Star Cauldron erupted and Sailor Chaos was born and the Golden Age of Mankind fell and a darker future loomed. An age of bloody red slaughter when the Senshi were destroyed and lesser successors, monsters the size of tanks wielding crude thunder-weapons burned the galaxy in fire. Was that the future? Or just her own nightmares, the results of her quest to find the means to break Chaos, to see if she could draw enough force from other Senshi to do this.

**_You cannot escape me._ **

It strode before her in something unlike the fuku of Senshi, some of them were more like true armor, others less overtly so yet no less magnificent than the true suits. The armor was like the plate armor known to some worlds, yet not so. It breathed and moved like something visceral and fleshy. The thing's face was no face at all, it was a night sky in vaguely humanoid fashion that oozed the bleeding light of murdered stars and fractured reality around it.

_**You cannot escape me.** _

"Mistress," she heard the breathy voice of Sailor Iron Mouse.

"Yes?" she said as the monstrous Thing that haunted her vanished behind her sight.

"We have arrived at Kentanu. And the new barred spiral galaxy."

Galaxia raised herself off of her throne, looking at her golden armor. She ignored the slow expansion of symbols and glyphs that hurt eyes if they were too visible for too long.

"The Broken Back," she mused, as she was at the western edge of a galaxy the children of Earth called the Milky Way.

"Order the guns to fire, let this galaxy bleed!"

Her flagship opened fire and the Senshi of this planet immediately transformed and tried to create a barrier to withstand the destructive force. Fire fell from heaven and shattered their barrier. From the starship a single ship went down, Galaxia descending in it. It was a small ship, a tiny thing next to a planet less than 5% larger than the planet its inhabitants called Earth at this point in its history, but still slightly so.

She stepped out of her ship in golden armor, waving her henshin and looked carnivorously at the local Senshi, who were initially puzzled and then horrified.

"G-G-G-alaxia?"

A voice spoke using her lips:

_**Not anymore.** _

The henshin moved and a wave of destructive power reached out, the Senshi crumbling into ashes and their star seeds floating into her bracelets and the planet trembled and then corroded into greyish ash, leaving the planet dead, no life, not even the most miniscule left. Standing on the ashes with great wings like the blackened bleeding pinions of a chiropteran from her back Chaos roared from Galaxia's lips. It was an Antisound that rippled across the Universe.

SOL:

In response to the howl of Chaos itself, Metallia stirred in her chambers within the star, fully awakened and the last of the creatures of the Dark Kingdom to do so. Her gaze turned down toward the Earth. She looked and she beheld something very familiar.

 _You live. Princess Serenity lives. How? I slew them all!_

The Sun's prominences, observed by an early Solar satellite, took on a strange hue that was not quite a color and an unearthly psionic scream rippled through the Solar System.

TOKYO, JAPAN:

Shaken by her experience with the thing that had tried to kill Naru the other day, Usagi Tsukino had recovered from her first fight sufficiently to feel....normal. Darkness pulsed and moved, and rumors of strange movements of the Russian army in Siberia and what the Russians officially termed an 'artillery training accident' that slaughtered an entire division of their finest infantry meant nothing to her. Japan's Self-Defense Forces and those of US troops in the region were on higher alert, yet curiously the Russians said and did nothing in the presence of the United States. An ancient secretive hotline between the GRU and the CIA activated and a quiet message was sent. Fear and trembling followed. Something had come from the stars. Something had come to Project Luna's international spawn.

The confirmation that humanity was, after all, not alone in the universe roiled the Great Powers, and armed soldiers were more visible in Japan than at any point since the Second World War. When a strange sleeping sickness struck parts of the Tokyo region near Usagi's place, she dismissed it as just that, refusing to accept the hints in dreams and sensations. School had gone well that day, minus another clash with that idiot Mamoru Chiba. This time he'd taken the book she was reading and she'd tried and failed to jump up and get it. He'd teased her about her hair again. Why did Mamoru have to be so annoying? Why didn't he leave her alone?

If only he could be like the handsome prince in her dreams, Endymion. There was a truly wondrous figure, who felt as ancient and mighty as the Earth itself, empowered by its secrets. But that was a dream. Clashes with annoying bratty men only a year older who insisted on treating her like a child because she was clumsy and ate a lot of food and somehow annoyed him by existence?

Her bun-ornaments began to flash red and she heard someone fall to the ground. She dashed into the wall of a building and then the scream from the end of the Galaxy rippled to the Earth, and as scientists gaped in stupefied awe at multi-colored prominences that seemed to resemble claws and faces, Usagi heard something moving. It shuffle-loped like something....alien.

The words came to her mind again and she found herself grasping something, her broach. Energy flowed out and around her and she felt it, the transformation. From clumsy to graceful, commanding strange power. Purity, hope. The unbreakable shield against the everlasting darkness, the light that illuminated the endless night.

" _Moon Crystal Power, Make-up!_ "

Sailor Moon strode out cautiously. She saw a civilian collapsed and seemingly withered into a near-skeleton and heard snuffing. Something was there and it squatted. It looked vaguely simian, like a mangy gorilla with great fangs. Its eyes shone with nauseating not-quite-light as it looked to her. It growled and then it began to step outward, as she held her hand up, her tiara in it. As it lunged at her, she hurled the tiara, shouting

"Moon Tiara action!"

She sweatdropped as the attack somehow missed, and then saw a white rose on the ground. She raised an eyebrow and then in a flash of smoke, she saw someone that made her look amazed. Her tiara began its boomeranging back and the creature raised a hand to catch it, only to howl as the tiara seemed to tear the hand off.

The man in the mask and the cape raised a cane that flashed with magic, seeming to glow. He smiled and then slammed it into the thing and Sailor Moon hurled her tiara again, and the creature became a random person whose knuckles bled slightly.

"Who are you?" she spoke in wonder.

"Tuxedo Kamen," he said with a sly smirk.

He went over to her, and took her gloved hand, kissing it.

"Pleasure to meet you, Sailor Moon."

She stared in wonder and then squealed a bit after he left in a sound much like that of Usagi. Somehow, Sailor Moon vanished and Usagi was back just in time to see Naru and Umino greeting her. All the while she wondered about the kiss that still left her knuckles tingling.

As they went off to the arcade, she found herself looking in surprise at Chiba Mamoru, whose gaze met hers. At her raised eyebrow he blew a raspberry and she snorted. Pity that Chiba-sama would never be like Endymion or that wonderful man in the mask. She sighed romantically and stopped. Naru waved her hand in front of her.

"Earth to Usagi, you need to get with the program."

Usagi facepalmed and went on with her friends.

PHARAOH 90 INDUSTRIES, MAIN OFFICE:

Yrvin hissed as the bandage pulled at his skin. In medicine as in other things, the Architects were highly advanced, and the wounds from the mutant creature with the power of wind had healed. He'd been foolish to underestimate the science of the lesser race of Tamir III. They were not that primitive, and the creature that he'd faced had in truth been no direct match in raw power terms but oh, the speed. Those fangs hurt, and the wound might have become necrotic had his biology been more compatible. A couple of days and it, and he, would be fully healed. That meant three days to further establish this company. He saw the notes of the late Professor Tomoe included financing a school, and he smirked. Now there would be a story for his father, the great psionic founding a school.

"Mugen Gakken," he read the name. Yes.....and the ironic bit, the truly delightful and banal use of his powers would be to con people into thinking he actually paid them yen when he paid them sweet fuck all. He took his pen and in a careful pattern summoned by the screen marked the name he'd chosen for himself in Japanese in Kanji. He swore when he had to take five tries to do it, and was relieved to get it fully right on the sixth.

He then looked out at the seemingly empty business. He could not simply make something of the true nature that was here, that would complicate his task. Yet.....his fingers steepled and he then did some reading on the Sim and smiled. Now there would be a truly delightful combination to work with.

TOKYO, WATERFRONT:

Sailors Uranus and Neptune looked satisfied at the transformation back into human of two of the creatures of the Dark Kingdom. There was something strange in this. It felt almost insultingly easy, like they'd awoken too soon. The feeling passed and they were Haruka Tenoh and Michiru Kaioh again, stumbling back into their apartment and into a slow soft slumber in each other's arms.

There were no dreams that night, only comfort. Neither the dreams of the silver palace on the moon, nor the slow and horrific fall of the place.

The Earth turned unknowing of the greater events beyond, and the burning of the first planet in this galaxy by the Shadow Galaxia sent a terrible signal rippling through space.

TOKYO, MIZUNO HOUSE:

Ami Mizuno tossed and turned in dreams of musical riffs and water and a woman like her but empowered like Sailor V. Strange dreams, dark and scary at points but wonderful. But dreams. Just dreams.


	12. Silence Amidst Infinity

TOKYO WATERFRONT:

The Outer Senshi would not for a very long time understand the nature of the kinds of youma they fought, nor the glimpses at the manifold attempts of Chaos to assault and to tear into mortal life, to render the perfect flawed, to drive all that was or would ever be to become the architects of its own downfall. Nor did they understand the strange pale woman with eyes that at times took on a golden hue that left a kind of greasy tang in the air who began to watch them after the xenos presence on Earth had sent that rippling display of power. Had they seen her, there would have been a flash of memory, of so very long ago:

Artemisia of Arcadia.

Uranus smiled at the rangy thin woman who held by her side a strange kind of sword.

Uranus, Senshi of the Wind.

_A youma, a great and swollen pustule of something like the wrought form of decay made manifest, had slain her mother some sixteen years ago and in that time she had risen to become the new Senshi of the Wind-Planet, guarding it in its vast solitude. She had not expected that solitude would now, but fifteen days into it, come to such an abrupt halt at the image of a woman of Terra. She was clad in golden armor, and that made her raise an eyebrow. Gold was a soft, weak metal. Not useful for strength. The armor was golden, not merely gilded, and bedaubed with strange symbolism. Among the most prominent was that of a double-headed eagle, a symbol wrought with bloody nightmarish aspects that seemed latent within it and the chiming of a broken clock._

_She had a scabbard that was of Terran manufacture, and that too made her raise an eyebrow in contempt._

_Don't underestimate the works of Terra, Uranus. You Senshi are not the only ones wielding power, in the end._

_Her voice was soothing, supernaturally so. It was then that the Youma made its manifestation. It was a two-headed thing crudely shaped like a bird, with the appearance of iridescent kaldeiscopic fire wrought into something alien, that moved with a semblance of life, but it was Neverborn, a thing of Chaos made manifest. Uranus drew her space-sword, and Artemisia drew her own blade, brushing her right hand against the runes, which suddenly blazed into a brilliant kind of flame that made the two-headed thing hiss. Sharing a smile between them, Artemisia and Uranus leaped forward, Uranus by far the faster, the hammer against which Artemisia was the anvil._

The reborn Senshi did not remember, but Artemisia, whose presence would have disconcerted the Russian Army had it seen a woman whose dead body had been prominently displayed following a strange accident in the Khyber Pass and a controversy made the deeper when that body vanished alive and well smiled fondly.

They did not understand, yet they were the outer defenses, the first soldiers of the stars. Artemisia knew of her companion Perkwunos's visions. He, the Stormlord of the Old Era, the Anathema of Chaos and the Golden Battle King to the Old Senshi, believed in an age to come where humanity, under the eyes of the Senshi would span the galaxy and achieve wonders beyond reckoning....and then Chaos would corrupt the Men of Iron and with them drag the Senshi down, leaving in his hands, and in theirs. Theirs to go to Molech and to the hellish thing carved by the foolish works of a long-dead species, and theirs to remake the galaxy and prevent extinction.

Perkwunos had been an uncanny figure, she remembered. She remembered too the downfall of old Arcadia, and of the monster of incarnate power and wrath that had rampaged through her first family, slaying her second and third-born children. She had seen him then, in his first display of the first truth, the tall golden giant yet to come, though a dim foreshadowing of a far future, and the deeper truth beneath it. For a moment she flinched and paled and her eyes began to glow with a brilliant golden hue. Fire crackled, but it was not a truthful fire, nor quite the flames of the monstrous thing that lurked in the Sun and which Perkwunos was even now laying the groundwork for the first steps in a confrontation yet to be born.

The Muspel-Jotynjur in the Sun had made her own bargain centuries ago with the dreaded powers of Chaos, the entities beyond the Veil. They, in the form of a thing of dreams hiding behind its own masks, had given her the power to ensnare a mighty sorceress, and so she had torn down the old era. Twice had she tried to slay Perkwunos and twice had he become a giant, all-consuming, godlike, and in the clash of Powers humanity built stories of myth, the Sun Goddess come to Earth to lay siege to Susanoo, and-she shuddered again with a brief flash of the monstrous thing in Lydia-that-was-of Susanoo tearing down the dragon.

Of old Thunor and the Jormugandr, Zeus and Typhon. So many of humanity's legends of Gods were born in that dimly-understood war of man (insofar as she or Perkwunos were human, and both of them were far less so than the Senshi and their rulers) versus Star Vampire. 

A person fell forward, as the Senshi, in full transformation, moved in carefully synchronized fashion. Next to them was a woman watching from just far enough way that her red eyes met Artemisia's golden ones and widened in recognition, then horror, then awe. Artemisia's smile was cold, at first, then sorrowful. In the sight of the newly transformed (in truth for both her first time in a very long time and in one of many transformations yet to come), Setsuna Meioh, awakened early and aware that there was no means to fully repair what had gone wrong, and stuck in powerlessness, met the bitter gaze of one who saw part of Perwkunos's visions were true indeed. That still did not mean he was destined to become the Master of Mankind by the will of any gods, however.

The person that fell forward began to cough up blood, and spoke:

**_Samus. That's the only name you'll hear. Samus. It is the end and the death. Samus is the man before you, Samus is the man beside you. Look out! Samus is here!_ **

A shout of: Deep Submerge! later and the person howled and seemed to move over, dead. The Senshi were horrified. Their powers were designed to heal, not to kill, not like Perwkunos and his works of bloody red slaughter. They moved cautiously to the corpse, Uranus lightly tapping it with her foot. The creature grabbed her by the leg in a grip of iron strength, working itself to its feet in a fluid motion.

**_Samus is here._ **

With that it hurled Uranus far away and loomed forward, flesh changing in grisly fashion, extending into a dog-like maw, as it moved with a loathsome gorilla-like fashion on clawed knuckles.

A shout of _Dead Scream!_ and the creature struck by the blast screamed in agony.

Then, finally, the little girl that had finally, in a quiet act done in secret to spare her too much scrutiny been taken in as their ward in circumstances they did not fully understand stood and found herself transformed, staring in awe at her glaive. The creature turned to her and its gaze was quieter, more dangerous. With that same bewildering speed it lunged at her only to be tapped by the glaive. Sailor Saturn's stare was calm, and the creature stared blankly from golden eyes that were not true eyes and it burst in a smell of sour blood, leaving no trace of what had been its host.

A flash of light later and Sailor Saturn was gone, leaving a terrified Hotaru Tomoe who ran for her papa, knowing that her biological father was long-dead and she had only now, after a long time in the limbo of an orphanage (or so it seemed to a girl her age) found a potential family again that might last, and that made her run the harder. She found her, sitting up and shaking her head.

"What the Hell was that?"

Then her eyes met those of Setsuna Meioh, still transformed.

"Who are you?"

"Sailor Pluto, guardian of time. It is....a pleasure to meet you, Sailor Uranus."

There was a look of sadness in her eyes that Haruka Tenoh would not understand until many years later, but only she saw it. Her gaze went to Hotaru and her wild-eyed stare and trembling hands and she moved to hold the other girl, letting her shake out the impact of what they had seen. When Setsuna looked back, the pale woman with the golden eyes was gone. As if she'd vanished into thin air. Setsuna's gaze narrowed and her jaw tightened. She remembered the creature their foes called the Anathema and his.....daughter or consort, none were quite sure what Artemisia of old was to it. It seemed with the return of the Dark Kingdom and their awakening in a way that she did not remember nor truly focus upon how things had changed, that other ghosts were crawling out of the woodwork.

As Hotaru calmed, Uranus's gaze returned to her.

"How do you know who I am?"

"It's a long story." With that Sailor Pluto tapped the ground with her staff and was effortlessly changed back to Setsuna Meioh with a more sedate flash than others.

As Michiru arrived, very confused by what she'd seen, and protective of Hotaru and of Haruka, she looked at the graceful green-haired woman with a mixture of confusion and familiarity that matched the twitching emotions on Haruka's face.

"Shall we go out for coffee and I start to explain things?"

None of them noticed that Nephrite of the Dark Kingdom, once one of the Terran Shitennou, had seen the clash. He had seen the perfectly seemingly normal human fall forward and spit blood, blood that became more plentiful than any body could have held, then the grisly transformation and the dog-faced red-skinned giant that had risen and called itself Samus. Something familiar lurked at the edge of his consciousness. An old time, and the scene of Beryl with kaleidoscopic eyes and the impression of a great giant of lava that had seemed to exist in the heart of the Sun itself. He blinked. A woman with golden eyes was also there and she had.....

His eyes narrowed. She had taken one of her golden gloves and snapped her fingers and in a flash of light obscured by the daemon she had vanished. Another unknown in this strange era. Queen Beryl would need to be informed.

With a nod, the three older girls and the one younger went out. It was quite fortunate that the local high school had been shut down by the technical malfunctions, all of which had repeated that same:

I am Samus litany for an hour before the clash came. The middle school had started to have the same malfunctions and was likewise closed.

THE ARCADE:

Something very strange had happened at her middle school, something that Usagi had not quite understood when it had happened. The announcements had come on unprompted and a stratchy un-voice had spoken what were and were not words: ** _Samus. It's the only name you'll hear. Samus. I am Samus. Samus is the end and the death. Samus. Samus is the man before you, Samus is the man beside you, look out! Samus is here!_ **

Even those without the kind of strange power she had sensed something fundamentally wrong about the voice. It was more than the Youma that had attacked Naru back in the day, and that strange, but brilliant, girl with the blue hair had seemed to react much as she had. The announcements and computers had been totally disconnected across the academy and yet the voice had spoken as effortlessly as when they were fully hitched. That had led to the closing of both the nearby high school and this one, and to several other facilities that had likewise displayed the same phenomena.

A flash of strange energies very akin to that that Sailor Moon was capable of doing had followed, three strange presences, and then nothing. The phenomena had stilled, and the creepy shadows that had clung to the outside of the Arcade where Naru had cringed and some inner part of Usagi, the kind that responded to her brightly flashing bun-jewels, had grasped her henshin stick and prepared for some kind of confrontation. Then the shadows were gone. Usagi, usually the clumsiest and goofiest of her class, impressed a great many people her age when she just stepped into the arcade and then confidently began to play games like nothing happened.

After she'd beaten Naru to her own surprise by two points in a game of Pac-Man, she went to get more tokens and stumbled into someone, knocking the other person over and scattering the book she was reading from her hand.

The girl scrambled quite deftly to get the book, and sighed in relief at her place somehow not being lost.

"Sorry about that," stammered the blonde. The bluenette rolled her eyes slightly and then blushed.

"My name is Tsukino Usagi, who are you?"

"I-I am M-Mizuno Ami."

Usagi smiled.

"Want to join me and my friends?"

Ami looked over at Naru and the two others, face going very pale and looking longingly at her book.

  
"Is it all right if I read?"

"Of course, Mizuno-chan!"

With that Ami gave her a brief shy smile and went to join Usagi and her friends. Destiny's wheel turned and the second of the long-standing allies that was sundered had their meeting, and on far better terms than those of the Outer Senshi and the General.

DARK KINGDOM BASE:

On the surface it was Beryl on her dark throne who heard the words of Nephrite. In truth it was Metallia, the Jotynjur extending her presence to see through Beryl's eyes and feel through her hands. She had sensed a very old presence, and another. Impossibly not reincarnated, somehow truly alive. Somehow, even facing the abomination in Lydia, the last major time she had seen or sensed them, had not been enough. Nephrite's descriptions were tenuous. He had said something about a mere mortal unaffected by his plan, something that did not disrupt it but had been enough of an unknown that it needed to be reported. A mortal had bled from the mouth and then oozed teeth and become a giant of reddish skin dispelled by not one of the Outer Senshi but all of them.

And the name. Samus. The end and the death, a being that should not even have logically existed and yet....out there in the grander scheme, the Galaxy bled. A great monster had begun to wage a war to reave it, seeking a means to destroy that she sealed within her. Galaxia was coming. Metallia had known of her in the past and had hoped that destroying the Silver Millennium would give her power sufficient to face the mightiest of all Senshi. So it would have. Yet even with Galaxia on the outer edge of the galaxy, and having burned but a single world on its very northernmost fringe, her power was palpable.

Galaxia without, and now the End and the Death within.

As she heard, she nodded, and then spoke to Nephrite:

"Thank you, General. You have told me much of value. Accelerate our plans, draw more harvests to feed the Beloved Queen of the Sun. We must grant her the power to go from the realm of the stars to that of the Earth, and then we shall be able to confront things like this....Samus."

"Your will is my command, Queen Beryl." With that he knelt and then teleported away. There was much to do, and life energy to harvest.

SHADOW GALACTICA FLAGSHIP:

Galaxia's armor now covered more of her body, after she had built new plates in a trance. No area of her was left exposed save her face, and her right hand had been transformed into a set of claws that at her will gleamed with kaldeidoscopic energy. Her armor was still golden, reflective of her great strength and her great purity. She was the mightiest of all Senshi, for eight thousand years had she contained Chaos within her and sought through Galaxies for a means to banish it. Eight thousand years when most Senshi would have fallen in eight days. Yet nothing was truly infinite and in the shadows of her starship as it passed through the empty void of space, aiming for its next point and a junction of Senshi of seven worlds, the light of murdered stars oozed from her eyes and entrapped the darkness of space, darkness that began to feed into the light and they were in unity.

A galaxy was a vast place. Much combat would await her. No more seeking to contain Chaos, she was-

She grasped her head with the unclawed left gauntlet that still gleamed with the light of Galaxia. No. She was Sailor Galaxia, Senshi. Container of all that was Chaos. She would not seek to contain it, she would seek to find something that could kill her, and if it could kill her, it would take Chaos with her.Within her mind's eye a bloated thing sat on a gilded throne and gazed at her with the light of murdered stars, and mad laughter thundered out of an over-wide fanged smile. 

**_You cannot escape me, Galaxia. Not even in death. Chaos will reign over all things and your Senshi shall fall and fall and fall. O Master of Doom by Doom Mastered, O Happy to be Dead, yet you shall long for death and never die. All you seek to save shall you ruin._ **

Galaxia screamed and the claws gleamed with energy and dug deep grooves into her throne. The darkness within laughed in an endless mad laughter, cold and bitter. Another day in the endless voyage of the Shadow Galactica through the infinite stars.


	13. Old Ghosts and New Graves

The Silver Millennium:

_The Shitennou had never liked the entity they only knew as the Anathema, nor did they know what it was, nor why it was there. It was said of old that it had been born with the first sapience of Old Earth, the embodiment of a spear of unyielding iron pointed at Chaos. Chaos. Jadeite snorted. A fireside tale and children's story, the rumors of a malignant will behind the creatures that jibbered and howled in the dead of night. Stories of dripping hearts offered to a giant in armor, a bloated embodiment of decay, the changer of ways and the Dark Prince. Or beyond all this, a force that was anti-life, the soulless. Neverborn, envying those born with souls and wills. Infinitely powerful but reliant on the whim of mortals._

_Yet he was troubled, as were the others. Beryl, the sorceress of the great plain in the great continent that sprawled at the heart of old Terra, then smooth and not yet become the Himalayas that would be born in the wake of the fall of the Silver Millennium, had become a figure of growing power and glory. She wielded dark powers, it was said, and fearsome. Perhaps the equal of the immortal star-soldier Senshi. He could not believe that. There were only two beings on Terra he considered equal to the Senshi. And it was the image of one of them that was staring him in the face. It was strange. He could not say that such a towering figure in dark burning gold armor and eyes that seared into souls set into a deep brown face even blinked. Or breathed. Humanity swollen and become monstrous, adorned with power sufficient to crack the skies and reality itself with a thought._

_**Beryl must be destroyed.** _

_Jadeite scoffed._

_**She's a huckster with a big mouth. None shall believe her. She claims she can boil blood in veins, transform people into these so-called Youma.** _

_**Youma are real, General. Only fools deny that Old Night is there.** _

_He scoffed again._

_**The King will see you, Chaos-Bane.** _

_It was the Crown-Prince who interrupted his words. Face still level and the smothering supernova-scale power that surged through him visible, the entity gave Jadeite a mocking salute with the wicked-looking claws on his gauntlet and stepped away._

_It was later when he had confronted a thing that had erupted from the horrid transformation of a screaming Terran into a thing that had spoken of itself as the End and the Death, a thing he had banished with the power of the Heavenly King within him and his wielding a great spear, Gungnir, to do so that he had wondered. Then the sorceress of the plains came to him first of the Shitennou with eyes that glowed with the dead light of murdered stars and he knew only the brief horrid moment of awareness when he had fallen in the last battle in the Imperial Palace on Luna._

Jadeite awoke.

The dream he'd just had had been the strangest he had ever had since his awakening as a servant of the Queen of Queens. A giant in golden armor with eyes like stars, and the same thing that Nephrite had mentioned. And dreams of being a being unchanged by the ever-present power and whim of Chaos.

He shook his head. A children's tale. He had work to do and must do it swiftly, the spirit of the Sun, the living power and majesty of the realm of fire, demanded her throne on the Earth be made for her use. The Senshi were awakened, to a degree. Of the inner Senshi, only Venus and Moon had their power, the rest had yet to awaken. While all of the Outer Senshi were, and it had been them that dispelled the creature Samus, they were not truly aware of the return of the Dark Kingdom and it would be to their advantage were this to stay so.

The first youma that had awakened the mysterious Sailor Moon had tried to work within one kind of scheme, and Jadeite needed another. He sat at his desk, slurping a soda, pondering what manner of thing might work. His eye fell on an advertisement for a kind of gaming system and a cruel smile began to pass his lips. Yes, that might do. That might do very nicely indeed.

A CAFE IN WATERFRONT TOKYO:

"So, you're the guardian of time and space?"

It was Michiru who asked the question, doing so with a voice far more calm than she in truth felt.

"I am."

"You look as young as we do."

"it is the blessing of our power as Senshi."

Michiru nodded, granting the point.

"You seemed surprised to see all of us."

"I was. Not near as much as to see what we destroyed."

Haruka then asked the next question:

"So what was that thing?"

"A youma, of a very particular sort."

"Ah. More detail maybe?"

"Not a good idea with that particular sort. In the old days the Queen did not believe in giving them names and power of worship. Doing that drew in the creatures those things are shards of, and strengthened the great enemy."

"Great enemy?"

"Yes. What name it held then I remember but my duties with the Time gate forbid me to name until the right time."

Hotaru was the quietest of them, enjoying greatly the set of sweets she'd had Haruka buy for her, having won the older woman's heart and kindness in a way an uglier part of Michiru resented. Haruka had been distant in an age only she remembered fully, caught up in the demands of duty. She had won her heart and wished to have this reciprocated and at times it seemed to be, and at times not. Like the wind Haruka was fickle and could not be fully contained, only dealt with, at least for now. And then that girl who had survived the demise of her father had come in and the stillness and quietness of Haruka's mask of ice and iron had fallen, but only with her.

They fought frequently, and they fought well. Fighting made them both feel alive in a way they were quietly uncertain about. Fighting meant the dreadful terror of the skulking things that had killed their families was dispelled with each triumph. And as the tall green-haired woman with a skin color and a build of the Indian subcontinent but a perfect Tokyo accent continued to tell them a partial story of a long-dead civilization, they listened. Only Hotaru largely ignored it, because she at one level knew even more of things than Setsuna did, and it was Saturn within her who knew of certain careful omissions. But Saturn's power and knowledge were bound in the mindset of a young child and the child prevailed around food.

It was a dark and a bloody story that Setsuna told, an age of demons and of sorcery, of battle and of death and of the ending of nine worlds in a final cataclysm when a thing from the Sun had revealed itself in the final phases, wielding a great broadsword and in a vision visible from space hurled it into the Earth, unleashing the wave of final ruin that had dissolved the Empire of Luna at one blow.

That story even Hotaru broke from eating enough to listen to. Their faces were white, fingers tapping on the table, breathing low and slow. Images flashed, including that of the vision of a towering golden giant whose sword of fire hewed down the monsters where it struck and of that being standing with another, the last two survivors of the old age in the wake of Metallia's Doom.

"So why are we here now? Should we have awoken now?"

"I don't think so. Something changed with time and with its wake."

"This Metallia you were thinking of?"

"No. It was something else."

She pondered what she had seen flitting in and out of the Silver Kingdom, the strange arcs of unknown energies, their inevitable descent from 'above' insofar as such a concept had in space. Mountain-ships with vast crews and such dreadful, near-divine power. She had only ever met one of the entities, if met described seeing the broken corpse with its entrails oozing out in the dead palace, and the discovery of the horrid device that the thing had shielded with a strange temporal weapon that had shielded it to a great degree....until Metallia herself had found it and broken its power and left the entity dead, though her power was somehow unable to affect the thing itself.

Unable....or unwilling and playing deeper schemes. She knew what it was, at one level. A device to make artificial star-seed, an abomination of a concept that could only fail and fail disastrously. Something had happened with that device, and the forces of the Dark Kingdom had been playing at much worse levels. She could sense monsters, and had a horrible feeling that something else lurked in this thing with them, or had come in to find its lost relics. The Dark Kingdom or the Star-Knights.

All of this flitted through her mind and she continued:

"There was another thing in the timeframe of the fall of the old Empire. Aliens. Wielding mountain-ships and commanding power over reality itself, at least within limits. They were not corrupted by the Great Enemy, but they are no friends of Earth."

Uranus blinked.

A fragment of another element of a recurring set of dreams flitted through her mind:

_A bulky creature gazed at her with coal-black skin mottled with dark reddish-orange patterns and golden animalistic eyes. His beard had a dark triangle within its centre and reddish-orange outer fringes. A clean-shaven upper lip that was mockingly akin to what had been a human frame, once. He was clad in a strange kind of armor of a kind she'd never seen. Not that of the knights of old Europe nor the Samurai of the Yamato._

_**I have secured the last traces of this for my father as an agent of the Architects. You are alone now, Haruka Tenoh of the Ainu of the Land of the Rising Sun. You are alone.** _

_**Neptune and Pluto and even Saturn strike at the power of my mind that shields us in vein. Now that the work of dreams is done, to you I am Master Pharaoh 90, the Archite-** _

_A brilliant light, a light that was ancient and newborn and wonderfully famliar all the same suddenly gleamed and the alien turned with a snarl, raising his arm with his fingers in a claw in his gauntlet. His focus slipped just enough that she was able to grasp her henshin.._

For a moment she thought of the armor....then she remembered the thing that she had fought with Sailor V. Finding a picture of it in an old newspaper she kept, she showed it to Sailor Pluto.

"Sailor V and I fought this together. It wasn't our more traditional enemy, but....it wore armor, And it was not like us, or regular humans."

None of them expected Pluto's face to get that sickly look of a corpse on seeing it, and looking more closely at her.

"When did this happen?"

"A few months back. Major headline news, surprised you didn't hear of it."

"Well I was at the Time Gates."

TOKYO, TSUKINO HOUSE:

Usagi shrugged. Her new friend Ami was coming over to meet herself and Naru. Those strange dreams that haunted her every night were still there. A beautiful woman like an older version of herself, more of a goddess, a Goddess-Empress in mortal form, with the kindliest smile she could have imagined. And a version of herself in a brilliant dress, and that wonderful Endymion of old Terra. Dreams of a dead civilization that made no sense. She was Usagi Tsukino. Crybaby, over-eater, and a woman who'd transformed and bested those monstrous.....things....that had been people, fortunately without killing them.

The doorbell rang. Naru was there first, and their hug of greeting was more than the usual kind of hug. Naru still remembered the monster and the appearance of the blonde who'd saved her. She had a very good idea who that being that so resembled her klutzy friend was, and this made her the more eager to hang around her. When the doorbell rang again, her eyebrow raised. None other than Ami Mizuno, the infamous genius to some, an isolated loner and daughter of one of Japan's leading medical innovators. She placed her shoes by the door and bowed shyly, and the suspicion dwindled. Usagi had the biggest heart she'd ever seen. There was more than enough room with that heart to share.

She went over to Ami and said warmly "Osaka Naru." Her hand was extended, and Ami took it.   
  
"Mizuno Ami."

"Wanna hang out?"

"Sure." Ami's smile was demure and quiet and as she followed, her eyes turned to Usagi whenever Naru and Usagi herself wouldn't think it too strange. There was a connection there, perhaps connected to the old dreams she'd had. Of a planet the most technologically advanced of nine. The forge where magical weapons were made. And the center likewise of the theoretical underpinnings of things. Something about Usagi seemed familiar, and it would be helpful to test her hypothesis that filled her with awe, dread, and wonder at the same time.

For all that there was a blessedly normal thing of being with two other girls, a shattering of her glacial isolation. It felt.....good.

HIKAWA SHRINE:

Rei Hino, a miko in training, had had strange dreams from youth. Battle and death in the beautiful shining white palace, her two loves dead. Of old Barsoom, where the desert trained the faithful. Something called her to the fires she maintained, and she saw for the first time what was to become a defining trait of her visions. _A tall woman with blonde hair and a sense of connection and heartache that she could not place. A powerfully built man who wielded a weapon akin to what he had wielded on a dead world but one saturated in the power of something ancient and malevolent. The image of his schemes to sap the life forces of others, and of a brilliant shining pair of women who drove him to retreat._

The visions held her in a trance, her body frozen.

The trance dispelled when they ceased and she shook her head. That was strange. Perhaps she'd need to see a therapist.

FOUNDATIONS OF WHAT WOULD BECOME MUGEN GAKKEN:

"Thank you gentlemen."

The group of investors nodded mechanically. They were not certain why so stocky and powerfully built a German was there in Japan at all, let alone his investment in building a new magnet school in an area known to be haunted by monsters. Nor what made his voice so compelling. He did not sound like a German when he spoke in Japanese, he spoke with a perfect accent the envy of any in the Tokyo area, and his words were not ones they could have repeated to themselves.

Yrvin Heshatani smiled, looking at the building that had been Tomoe Industries. It was going to be just outside the school campus. Plenty of potential, for both experiments to slake his time and his boredom in between hunting down and destroying monsters....and to see for himself what the science of Earth and the things he had taken from the palace of bones on the moon might do.

It would take years to arrange the destruction of his quarry. And he was too much the son of Shandrin to not delve further and deeper into what awaited him.

He paused for a moment when his gaze caught a strange being. He seemed ordinary, too ordinary. So ordinary that it was as much an overcompensation and a mask as the other more familiar kind worn. The only thing that connected them was the psychic sunfire in that gaze. Yrvin carefully did not meet the gaze directly, but he pondered again. That confirmed it.

He had believed this to be a world where the only supernatural forces were the Senshi and their Chaos. Now there were at least two such entities that were not of either, entities that to his understanding did not exist, nor did they deserve to exist, in a correlation with the Senshi. It seemed the incident with the demon in the middle school had brought them out of the woodwork. 

When the investors parted, the extraordinarily ordinary dark-skinned man vanished in the crowd. Yrvin's snarl was not that of a man and this was visible even through the telepathic glamour he easily maintained. This would definitely complicate the process. Not by that much, though. A single assertion of his willpower and the Earth would be broken asunder and die in what the monster he'd seen would later call an Exterminatus. That would have been the quick and dirty way to achieve his results and never faced anything of what he was likely to do so.

He could not resist the chance, however, in a world that would become accustomed to increasingly powerful magic and a realm of gods and monsters, the chances to display his power. It would fit in, and even in the more extreme elements no less so than the entity careful survey by rugged star-probes had determined nestled within the star of the Earth and had for at least millennia like a great vampire.

Something had changed and the star-vampire's tendrils were reaching toward the Earth. And unknown to Yrvin Heshatani or the Dark Kingdom, representatives of an old 'alliance' were about to collide when one of Beryl's super-soldiers, a being not quite a Shitennou or a Youma, but somewhere in between, had found his quarry and was staring at him from the shadows. 

It cackled madly. The Gaijin would suffer for his presence drawing the murderous wishes of his lady.

It froze when the entity that had looked so strangely at a being that glowed with murderous power turned to gaze directly at him. The eyes changed to become yellow animal-eyes and then the look was not that of surprise but contempt. The creature snarled. The arrogant Gaijin was going to pay for that.


	14. They come from the stars and bring their images with them

FOUNDATIONS OF THE FUTURE MUGEN GAKKEN:

Hello little Youma.

The words were not kind ones, and they were not in English. They were a telepathic battering ram that left the Youma falling from its shadows, all spines and snarling faces.

You think you're going to threaten Lord Pharaoh 90, the Architect of Fear?

The entity's bright white teeth shone as brightly as its golden animal-eyes, and a witch-light lit in them.

Wrong.

The Youma did not have time to scream before it exploded in a snap of dark energy that jolted Minako Aino, Haruka Tenoh, Michiru Kaioh, Setsuna Meioh, and Usagi Tsukino. And with them, the Dark Kingdom.

Spitting in the scraps of flesh and iridescent organs, Irving Christoffels in his human face stepped pace, his smile cold and displaying elements of his true face within it. That was an annoyance.

DARK KINGDOM OUTPOST ONE, TOKYO CENTRAL DISTRICTS:

"What was that?"

Beryl's question was sharp, with an element of derision.

"I don't know, your majesty. A surge of energy of some kind, clearly something dying."

"No Senshi can do that."

"No Senshi, no."

"What else is there in this city?"

"I don't know."

"Find out. Do not send a Youma, send five of your most powerful. Seek whatever did this, and kill it."

"Your will is my command."

And with that, Jadeite turned to his modified game stations, smiling as he took out orbs of a different sort. Balefires began to light in his eyes and un-words slipped from his mouth as the orbs went into the game stations. These would go out first. It was unwise to keep Queen Beryl waiting.

OUTER SENSHI RESIDENCE:

Setsuna shook her head. Somehow, Haruka and Michiru were able to afford a condominium like this with four rooms, each amply provided for. She did not know how, and she did not intend to probe too deeply. Time had gone askew around when all of the Senshi were born, in a way, but it had also not. She needed to find out how, and why they were all here, and all awakened. It was not meant to be like this, yet it was. The Outers were supposed to encounter the Inners around the time of the clash with Master Pharaoh 90, but now it was but a matter of time until all of the Senshi faced the Dark Kingdom. That would not, she supposed, be the worst possible alteration.

If anything it might make things simpler, and she remained undecided on the idea of keeping the Outers away from the Dark Kingdom and the slowly awakening Inners. And then there was that Samus-thing and the flash of dark energy, and that other identical flash from Siberia. A burst of power that was neither of Chaos nor Senshi origin, but something else, from the shadowy unknowns. And it was not the Anathema, the Chaos-Bane, for that thing could not move without volcanic star-like destruction even if it wanted to when it was unleashed on the battlefield.

Setsuna remembered the fall of the Silver Millennium, the powerful aliens flitting around in mountain-ships, and she remembered the vision of a smaller equivalent of those ships meant for a single person stalking through the Solar System, and the arrival of that other, second ship. Those were the things out of time, but where did they fit in? They had not been allies of the Empire of the Moon, but they were not allies of Chaos, either. That Uranus and Venus had encountered footsoldiers of these self-proclaimed Architects of Fear in Tokyo increased her fears, and the quiet burdens of being mistress of the Time Gates.

Setsuna buried all of these worries behind a smile when her fellow Senshi dragged in for breakfast. They'd moved in surprisingly quickly, with elements of the future meant for then already occurring. At one level her head said this was no good thing, but at another? Her heart watched the quiet calmness of Haruka and Michiru, and looked carefully and appraisingly at Hotaru Tomoe. The alterations of time had spared her Mistress Nine like a parasite within her, and becoming a being half-robotic and hidden elements here within artificial flesh. Setsuna could not quite bring herself to hate time-alterations that spared the girl who bound them all together elements of harsh fate and meant her good would flower with less hatred.

Her gaze quietly, as they were eating, flickered to Haruka and a look of sorrows set in. If one was spared, another would suffer. The look passed before Haruka and Michiru returned any kind of gaze to her and the meal passed in blessed quietness. Samus had come and gone, and while dark energy cast its sickly elements through Tokyo in a set of low, thrumming pulses, a day of tranquility was not the worst thing in the world. Not by a long shot.

TSUKINO HOUSE:

Ami quietly read while Naru and Usagi Tsukino played games. None quite paid attention to the charming blonde man on TV who advertised a new set of gaming stations sold at a special discount, and this would teach them in retrospect to pay closer attention to news broadcasts. For the time being, there were two friends relishing time with each other and with freedom from monsters and dreams of a dead kingdom on a dead world, and an isolated genius who was free to read in peace and savor a time without dangers.

MALIBU BEACH, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES:

The entity who had been Subject Zero-Two and now called herself Amatsu Mikaboshi had snuck onto the beach after sunset. If any had seen her or cast light, they would have seen the shadows visibly drunk into eyes of flowing liquid darkness, the entity having snuck around carefully. A monster was in Japan, dedicated to killing those like her, but she was empowered by Chaos itself. Its power was in her like blood in a vein, and she was so much more than that....Samus.

Fangs where there had been teeth gleamed white in the dead of night, and she knelt as a force slowly gathered around her with sufficient brutishness to make the ground itself trembling and crack and to cast a wind on a windless night. Chaos was her strength, and it had its appointed Queen. To the north she must go, and kneel before its representative's chosen agent, and tender her services. With her fangs visible and parted with thick drool from them, and an anti-song of thrumming power, the Mikaboshi flew over to the Arctic Circle.

D-POINT:

Alarms chimed and Beryl stirred. She was in her sleeping chambers and then she looked and her window was open, and something slipped through. Something clad in a darker mirror of a Senshi outfit, a skirt of mail and armor of obsidian hue that reflected the light of stars and moons and fundamentally wrong and sickened. Something that did not have eyes but singularities in its skull. And did not have teeth but great fangs like that of a saurian in a modified human jaw. That jaw opened and sickly seeming drool parted, and then it spoke in a low and throaty voice with a guttural grinding rasp to it, a near-perfect intonation to match that of a near-identical twin in Japan.

"Hail, Beryl, Chaos's thane to conquer the world. I am Amatsu Mikaboshi. Chaos has blessed me with a soul. I am here to be your ally, and to lead you to the success that you have earned, you and your Shitennou with you."

She was frozen and quiet, and whispered only "How did you get in here?"

"Chaos provides, Queen."

Beryl wanted to reach over and scream for the Shitennou but in a blur Zero-Two's hand clamped on her jaw, and the thing put a finger to her lips. 

"None of that. There are greater things here than the petty dreams of a dead kingdom. Soon, all that is to be shall unfold. And I am Chaos's agent to help you. Do you understand?"

In fear, Beryl nodded.

"Good. I shall be heading to Japan soon."

Beryl's vision focused clearly on the modified face, and her eyes widened.

"S-Sailor Uranus? How?"

"I AM NOT URANUS!"

The sudden bellowed shout did awaken the Shitennou, the other three of whom stumbled in with swords drawn, seeing the armored entity with the gauntlet on their mistress's mouth. She turned her gaze toward them with contempt.

"I am not Uranus. Call me that again and Chaos shall reward you indeed."

With that the armored Dark Senshi strode outward, and only one of the Shitennou sought to put his hand on her, and she grasped his wrist and hurled him headlong through the hall, slamming into the wall with a sickening crunch, sniffing.

"I can find my own quarters tonight. Do not hinder my purpose and my holy duty."

That night as she slept, the Mikaboshi did so very well indeed. She had a dream, a dream of a being like her in every way save that her eyes were a brilliant teal and that she was the wind itself, not the whistling gale in a graveyard, chilled with preternatural frost, facing her with a gleaming sword from her heart against her wicked blade that reflected twisted alternate angles that made eyes bleed and weep, and behind them both something monstrous, a great battering ram of psionic force in vaguely man-like form that watched the two of them with wicked golden eyes, waiting until each had weakened the other, intending to kill them both.

Chaos-blessed strength moved bonelessly beneath the sweep of the Space Sword and with the Soul-Renderer at her side, the Mikaboshi leaped at the shadowy thing in the flayed-hide armor, only to see it raise its right hand and two fingers. That was when she awoke, and began her move to Japan. 

The Dark Kingdom would fail, she knew. Chaos willed it. It had had its chance ten thousand years ago and the Senshi were reborn.

The spear pointed at the reborn Queen of Crystal Tokyo would not be that of a dead rebellion or a future backlash against immortality, it would be cold and unyielding iron, that of a being with the power of a Senshi blessed by Chaos itself. In a flash of utter bloody-hued blackness with the smell of dried blood, she vanished, and it was with great relief that Jadeite did not have to awaken to a monster in his room as had faced his Queen. He would have been less amused to realize she was perched on his roof, watching the first shipments of the game stations going out, eyes narrowing at the power oozing from five specific ones.

"Now where did the Dark Kingdom learn how to do that, I wonder?" She mused with her finger tapping her chin. It did not matter, the days of the Shitennou were numbered, and as they remained so, so would Beryl and Metallia come out to meet their duly appointed fates.

SHADOW GALAXIA FLAGSHIP:

Galaxia stirred in her sleep. She had seen another like herself, clad in dark black armor, though her gauntlets remained gauntlets and not claws. Given time she would grow to three times ordinary human height, and become a terrible monster and the most recurring face of Chaos. She was on an alien and distant world, too far distant. Even without a league of Senshi that would grow with her challenge before her, fifty thousand light years could not have been traversed instantaneously even if she had wanted to, and she did not want to very much. Within her the image of the future stirred, a version of her still more enhanced and blessed by Chaos's power, fully clad in dark black armor facing a shining Senshi Queen of a revived kingdom in a winner take all clash.

She could not see the deeper truth, and in truth she did not want to. There were monsters enough in existence.


	15. Dead by Dawn

_THE FUTURE MUGEN GAKKEN ACADEMY:_

Yrvin Heshatani, flushed with his easy triumph over a minor flunky of the Dark Kingdom knew that whatever force was behind this would not rest so easily with one. He expected some kind of retaliation, his Psionic abilities permitting him to sense the second of the truly powerful minions of the regime there. The sickly oil-like feeling of Chaos was tainting the air and the atmosphere of Japan, seeking to fasten itself upon those whom it would seize. And there was one of them, the Thirty-One, the figures he must seek and destroy. It was smarter than the rest, the smartest of them all, and Chaos had found in it a dangerous host. He would leave this one and the 'true' one for the last. Content to watch the process of building the academy unfolding, studying the social processes of the human society he found himself in, his powers told him of not one but five threats waiting in the shadows. So like them he too waited, in the same battlefield, veiling himself from the sight of the construction workers, who finished up for the day and went home. Levitating in a lotus position, Yrvin Heshatani made a pious pretense of caution, knowing whatever was coming would not wait for long, if it at all.

And indeed it did not.

 _DOWNTOWN TOKYO_ :

Jadeite smiled as he saw the gamestations had sold splendidly. Feeling their success in harvesting energy, and the low thrumming from Sol, and the thing in its heart that fattened and grew the greater on the sacrifices, he rested calmly, knowing that victory was assured. There was the matter of Sailors Moon and V, and the rumored presence of the Outer Senshi. That would be simple enough, and he had dispatched two youma to seek out Moon and destroy her.

Unknown to Jadeite, who was napping in his video game store, two incidents separated in time and space were to give the Dark Kingdom further jolts.

_FUTURE MUGEN GAKKEN ACADEMY:_

The monstrous Simian Youma approached the meditating Yrvin Heshatani, whose power thrummed with a low psionic power that led to them bleeding from nose and mouth and in one of them, eyes. 

They took a position something like an arrowhead, the largest in the forefront and the swiftest in the rear. The Gaijin was not a Senshi, nor was it the Anathema, the forgotten and dreadful Chaos-Bane. They did not know who he was, or what he was. The Gaijin's eyes opened, and the Youma froze. They knew something of the eyes of mortals and Senshi. No eyes were yellow with that brilliant piercing hue. The eyes of an animal, not a man. The Psionic glamour fell and Lord Pharaoh 90 rose where a German with a thick goatee and a clean-shaven upper-lip, bald head shining with a reddish hue from the sunlight had been. He was a stocky thing, burly and monstrous in appearance, armor like flayed hide but clearly worked metal of genuine, if horrifying, artistic aspects.

You seek to best me with dross?

The Youma howled in outrage and stormed toward him in a roiling tumult of Chaotic power. Yrvin snorted and raised his right hand, palm outward, fingers splayed.

The Dark Kingdom, they call you. If its masters are the supposed nobiility, what are you? The assistant swineherds?

A sudden burst of telekinetic force literally atomized the Youma again, the Youma's preparation to resist the power of Senshi or Kamen like the former-now-corrupted Heavenly Kings at a loss for what to do with something awesomely destructive yet outside any context they were prepared for.

This is getting annoying. I shall seek to see what it is that I can find out about this Dark Kingdom and its thralls.

With a contemptuous snort he again veiled himself and began to cast out a wide telepathic net, his eyes narrowingly slightly as the second event followed in the wake of the first.

JUST OUTSIDE THE TOKYO WATERFRONTS:

Naru, Mizuno Ami, and Tsukino Usagi were enjoying an evening stroll, Naru chatting absently about the strange 'Video Game Sickness' that had stricken down a surprisingly high number of people. The symptoms were strange, it seemed less an illness of science and more of Magic, the shadowy occult rising in a sense that had no parallel. It was not quite the tradition of Onmyoji, but close enough. Usagi had read, however briefly, the _Teito Monogatari,_ and the reality of a sudden sickness of no clear understanding that science could explain led her to furtively search shadows for the presence of a figure in an old model 1860s Imperial Japanese Army uniform. No Yasunori Kato appeared, and she was relieved, a quietness she could not explain marking that relief.

Naru and Mizuno were more different than she could have imagined people to be. One was a seemingly normal girl and refreshingly so, though every bit the avid gamer Usagi was. The other was a brainiac, and a medical genius, to be precise. The strangest bit was that Mizuno had seen her cat talk at one point, and stared at the cat very strangely and in a sense of familiarity, but had not made any comment sense, like she was afraid to admit that emotion had been there. She had not seen any monsters since her last encounter, though she had felt again the same sudden booming presence that had shown its hand before. Something seemed fundamentally _wrong_ about it in a way that the monsters did not. It was as if they, and she, existed within the same set of 'laws' and this thing was from something Other, the shadowy Outside. Those were thoughts that were not quite her own, more the kind she would have expected from that deft and adept princess of the shining palace on the Moon.

The strange dreams had only intensified since she had seen Mizuno, and there was a figure with hair akin to Mizuno's own. A doctor, the Senshi of the planet of healing and the forge of the Lunar Kingdom, Mercury's favored daughter. And yet.....she knew there was a Princess in those dreams. She was the Senshi of the Moon, and she was far too clumsy to be the princess, and she was deeply relieved for that and about that.

Then the sickliness that prevailed when the Monsters came made its presence felt, a cold wind blowing in a still twilight. Something began to echo with footsteps.

It stepped out of the shadows. It was a deformed and a ruinous thing, with glassy doll-like eyes. It opened nested mouths, four of them, full of wicked fangs, and made a shrieking bellow.The sound blew Naru off her feet and against a wall, as she slipped into unconsciousness. Girding herself, Usagi grasped the henshin stick at her side and shouted: 

_Moon Prism Power Make-Up!_ _I am the sailor suited Pretty Guardian who fights for love and for justice — I am Sailor Moon! In the name of the moon, I'll punish you!_ "

In a flash of light Sailor Moon stood. The creature bellowed again and moved toward her, and Mizuno Ami found something suspended in the air before her and a strange protective impulse she could not explain. She grasped it, feeling the unity of purpose, and words were spoken for the first time in millennia:

 _Mercury power, Make-up!_ _Guardian of Water and Knowledge, the pretty sailor suited soldier Sailor Mercury! Douse yourself in water, and repent!_

In a flash of light something within her that had always been there awoke and she felt the soothing presence of rain and the cold and inexorable power of ice and snow at her disposal. Her body was purified of mortality and reborn as where Mizuno Ami had been, Sailor Mercury stood, gazing at a Youma that was reaching for her fellow Senshi with arms that seemed to expand and contract in a gelatinous fashion. Her keen eyes gazed at it, and she saw a gleaming gemstone in its chest, a clear weak point. 

Mercury Aqua Mist!

Fog began to spread, leaving the creature confused and the glowing red light of its gem visible in the fog, a point that led Sailor Moon to react on instinct, some deep organizing power behind what she could do, and how she could do it, surging through her.

Moon Healing Escalation!

A second blinding flash of light and the Youma was no more, only a teenage girl who stood woozily and then slumped to the ground. Moon picked her up calmly, and nodded to Mercury.

"Thanks!"

With that she decided to test something, uncertain as to what her Senshi powers were actually capable of, and leaped upward. To her great delight, she found herself leaping tall buildings in a single bound, depositing the girl at a hospital. Staring blankly, Mercury shrugged, then leaped herself, and found herself able to follow her. As Moon left her there, Mercury turned to her.

"We need to be there when Naru wakes up."

Moon nodded, then her eyes went wide. 

"Ami?"

"Yes. I.....I knew of Sailor V. I didn't know there was a Sailor Moon."

"I didn't know there was a Sailor Mercury either."

The two exchanged a slightly crooked grin and took each other's hands in a firm warrior's handshake, before leaping back to the alley, detransforming with but two minutes to spare before Naru groggily woke up.

"What....the Hell....was that?"

"A monster. It ran away."

Mizuno smiled at her with an amused and slightly crooked grin.

"Tsukino here screamed and shook her arms at it so excitedly it decided to retreat rather than face her."

Naru laughed.

"That does sound like Usagi."

Usagi's frown was thunderous, and neither noticed nor felt the Psionic presence that had reached out through Tokyo and found them. The entity raised an eyebrow.

The fate of the world, in the hands of high schoolers. Well, this planet is fucked.

_HIKAWA SHRINE:_

Hino Rei looked into the flames again. They showed her something strange and unexplainable. An entity that would confront herself, newly transformed and empowered, and two other beings like her with power akin to hers, on a ship. The entity would be beaten.....and then vanish never to be seen again. She shrugged. Her. On a cruise ship. What were the odds?

_D-BASE, NORTH POLE:_

Jadeite was not napping anymore when Queen Beryl summoned him.

"Five Youmas, Jadeite. Five. Whatever that thing that wields whatever power that is killed them like they were nothing. The Youma mean more to me, and to Queen Metallia, than you do. The death of the one you sent after Sailor Moon undid the effects of everything you did with the game controllers and now there's yet another Senshi. Mercury."

He started.

"Mercury?"

"Yes. Mercury."

Beryl told him:

"I want you to bring Moon and Mercury to a cruise."

"You want me to bring the water senshi....to the ocean."

"To a cruise. She is the Senshi of Freshwater and ice. On the Pacific, her power will be more limited than you think."

"O.....kay."

"You will be able to draw them by having Thetis as an ally."

She smiled very coldly.

"The Mikaboshi recommended her for the task. Two Senshi who barely grasp their powers, against a Shitennou in full grasp of what Chaos has gifted you and my best Youma. Do not fail me here, Jadeite."

He met her stare levelly.

"I will not."

"Good. You are dismissed." 

As he left, the fanged appearance of the Mikaboshi materialized from the shadows. It was strange to see a body so akin to Uranus's, save the darker hair and the....fangs. She would not get used to it, nor to its appearance.

"You are sure about this?"

_It is the will of Chaos._

"Good enough for me, I suppose."

The Mikaboshi seemed to vanish into the shadows. It had felt the reach of that mind of the creature near the Mugen Gakken Academy, and it knew what the creature had done with others like her, and what it was going to continue to do. She had no desire to tempt fate, nor the creature's will by making the error of Icarus and flying too close to the sun.....at least not before Chaos had strengthened her quite a bit more than she was at present.

_OUTER SENSHI RESIDENCE:_

"You said not yet." Setsuna paused, and turned. It was Michiru, Hotaru and Haruka were still asleep.

"Yes....I did."

Michiru looked at her curiously.

"I know Haruka's met one of the Inners, why are we not allowed to meet them yet?"

"The deeper, more dangerous enemy has not yet revealed herself."

"Beryl?"

"No, not Beryl. The thing that empowered her. When it reveals itself, we shall join them and meet them. For now.......we wait to see when and as the Youma multiply, and help the Inners, unseen and unknown. They are not the only foes we need to fear."

"That thing with the........whatever it's doing, you mean."

"Yes."

Michiru wrinkled her nose.

"I don't like it."

"I know. Consider this something of a blessing. We all get to be people, not just the warriors we are, and we were."

They nodded.

Then Michiru asked Setsuna a question she had not quite anticipated:

"Who is Sailor Moon? I remember enough of the old realm to remember Princess Serenity, but there were no Guardian Royals of the old Kingdom."

"It is not yet the time for that."

Michiru's nose wrinkled further.

"Very well."

Sounds greeted them. Hotaru and Haruka were awake. The two shared a cryptic smile and went to make breakfast, knowing they had a few minutes before Tenoh and Tomoe would drag themselves out of bed to do so.

_TSUKINO HOUSEHOLD:_

After a furious argument with Shingo that in Usagi's biased opinion he had provoked by merely existing in her general direction when she was trying to do homework, Usagi found herself dragging herself to bed. Homework was tiresome. She had never been very good in school, and each transformation with and within the appearance of Sailor Moon left her feeling strange. Like there was someone else buried deep within her, a being of splendor and wonder and everything she wishes she was slowly trying to awaken. She shook her head and went to sleep, dreaming soundly, and for a change peacefully. 

The next afternoon, she returned home from school cursing the name of Chiba Mamoru and fuming that he had to annoy her by existing too only to see her mother holding a sheet of paper. She took it, and her eyebrow raised. She was invited, to of all things, a cruise. On her own.

"They....do know I'm just a freshman in high school, right?"

"We did talk with the cruise line. They do, and you are given this as is."

"Weird."

"Yes it is. Usagi, please be careful."

"I will, mom."

_MIZUNO HOUSEHOLD:_

That evening, returning from school with a low simmering rage at Umino, who had matched her grades again, and with the strange memories of the battle with the monster and her transformation into Sailor Mercury in her head, Ami found herself looking at a sheet of paper. Her eyebrow raised. A cruise. With a three person room she would be sharing with two other people, identities confidential for a variety of reasons not least that they were her age. She'd given a nervous warble of laughter only for her mother to confirm that it was real, and her eyes bugged out.

"This doesn't make sense."

"Oh hush, Ami-dear. This will be good for you." She snorted. Her mother could be so oblivious sometimes.

_HIKAWA SHRINE:_

Hino Rei had been blindsided by her father telling her she was going to be transferred to a public school, purely for the sake of the family's political image. More egalitarianism was in. That had left her speechless. Then she saw the paper and her face went white. The ship from her visions, and the transformation awakened by the thing that had been one of the Four Heavenly Kings of Old Earth, but was no longer a man, only a monster. She had tried to convince herself that her mother's death, which she had seen in the flames, was a coincidence. Survivor's guilt. Some rational explanation, not something out of magic and sorcery and the old kinds of tales of ancient days. Then this happened. The strangest part of all of this was that the fires she saw through so clearly seemed to become a part of her, and she became part of the renewing ties of a legendary fellowship.

But....if these visions were real.....

She remembered those other visions. The visions of the thing of the shadowy Outside, with the yellow animal-eyes, the stout thing that lied to people to make them think it was human and it was not. The thing that in every single one of her visions fought two versions of another being like them, one of the Sailor Scouts, and every single one of them ended in that one broken before them all, and the heartbroken scream of the Senshi of the Ocean. And the visions beyond them, a towering giant of molten magma that spoke with a mocking feminine voice in a low and rasping contralto, then raised things like arms and hands and the blinding flash of light, and the sinking finality of......Still one more, a shining golden armor turning black, a girl growing and swelling to three times her size and growing great wings like a bat, a sword of concentrated Chaos forming in her hand, her eyes fading with her body as Sailor Moon stared in horror and guilt, then her eyes hardened and she turned toward the abomination, her wings shining and glowing with a wondrous power beyond anything of Hino Rei to understand at that moment.

She vowed if she ever saw that girl with the Odango hair, that Sailor Moon, that she would not dare take the step to follow her. Perhaps if she did not.....fate could be prevented.

Her gaze turned to the sheet. She hoped it could be prevented. That invitation to that cruise and that room shared with two other girls indicated that destiny, like a tsunami, could neither be stopped nor reasoned with.


	16. Ships in the Night:

_The Hollandic, Cruise Ship:_

For all that Tsukino Usagi and her family had worried, the destination was a fairly simple one to reach. Too simple to the feelings and impressions within her. To her surprise, Shingo seemed to share the worries, hugging Usagi fiercely and telling her she'd better come back so he could bug her more. She gave him a lipquirk and cuffed him on the head affectionately and stepped in. Navigating around was simple enough, and she found her room, standing in the hall indecisively for a moment. As she breathed and prepared to speak, Luna suddenly spoke from her bag: 

"Oh come on, Usagi. You've been standing here for four minutes." Usagi yelped and seemed to literally leap up to grab the ceiling, as Luna fell out of the bag and landed on her feet, giving her a level stare.

"I know all of this troubles you. I won't leave you alone to face this." Usagi nodded, hesitantly, and then landed rather less gracefully on her face. She heard a disgusted huff behind her and hastily stood up, smoothing her skirt, as she turned to meet for the first time a very tall dark-haired woman with the palest skin she'd seen, and eyes that looked at her with a variety of emotions she did not understand then, nor know how to understand.

"This is my room."

Usagi stared at her, her eyes almost assuming a heart-shape as her mouth was open and she was drooling slightly. The other woman raised an eyebrow and stood staring at her, not certain what to say or do here. And of all people for her to meet, why someone who looked like that Odango-haired Senshi in her fire-visions?

When Ami opened the door, Luna strode in like she didn't have a care in the world, as Ami looked at the heart-eyed drooling Usagi and the tall Hino Rei, who had on a blouse, knee-length skirt, and flats. Ami looked at Rei very closely, not seeing what Usagi saw, and shrugging. With an impish grin she reached over to tap Usagi on the shoulder and she leaped onto the ceiling again, as Rei raised her eyebrow again.

"Very acrobatic." She clapped slowly, and Usagi's heart-eyes faded and her brow furrowed together, thunderheads seeming to form over her head. Quietly moving in her luggage, Hino Rei stepped into the room. Falling on her face again, Usagi brushed herself off, picked up her luggage, and followed her.

With that, she was in a room with a bunk bed and another bed, and three very awkward and silent women.

_GALLERY:_

"This had better work."

"I assure you it will. Between us, we are more than a match for any two Senshi."

Jadeite nodded.

"As long as V or the Outers haven't gotten involved."

"They haven't. We would have sensed them."

He nodded again. "Well, let's just....prepare, I suppose."

Thetis smiled, fangs visible and gleaming in the light.

"Yes, let's."

_CRUISE SUITE:_

The awkwardness did not quite fade, Ami keeping her nose solidly in a book, in this case the Teito Monogatari, having heard Usagi say much about it. She was becoming deeply engrossed in the narrative of the sinister figure who kept reincarnating as an embodiment of the disasters facing Japan when she heard a noise and looked up. Usagi and Rei were frowning at each other and glaring. Ami huffed and decided the book was much more interesting than the argument that ensued, neither knowing nor caring the first details, and she would never learn it, nor would she care to.

After a few minutes of a tempest in a tea kettle, it was Rei who sighed and extended her hand.

"Look, we all three have to be in a confined area. I'll keep my comments on your klutziness to myself if you don't say anything about my grandfather" and she squeezed Usagi's hand with a strength hard enough it hurt and Usagi yelped on that word "to me again."

With that Luna sighed in relief.

"Thank Amaterasu that's over."

Silence echoed in a deafening sense in the room as Hino Rei turned to the cat.

"You just talked."

Luna meeped and tried to run but Rei grabbed her by the scruff.

"I heard you. You talked. How are you a talking cat?"

"I'm a Mau, I advise......people."

"Wait, so you advise....her?"

The cat nodded in an uncannily human gaze that was rather strange and even vaguely creepy from a feline.

Rei dropped her on the bed.

"Well, clearly you need to do a better job." And with that she unpacked, not caring in the least about Luna and Usagi's eyes boring into her like daggers.

For the first few days, the truce held, and Usagi and Rei and Ami came to a wary mutual respect and the first steps to understanding. Something that had been deeply buried in Rei, a sense of profound loneliness haunted by her....gifts....was starting to break, and she found herself liking Usagi very much.....if at something of a hard pass at points with Ami. The two seemed to get along like fire and water. Then there was the strange blonde man and the teal-haired woman in the blue dress. The man who was supposedly the captain but vanished into thin air after touching a bright blue Orb when Usagi and Luna had snuck around. That vanishing left a familiar and horrid feeling like oil on water, and Ami had started when she felt it, and Rei's eye twitched.

Then came the third day. The couples on the ship had begun to feel a kind of wasting sickness akin to that from the video-games, and the cruise ship kept it quiet, outwardly for fear of giving Japan a reputation for an illness caused by an unknown pathogen concealed from the world, inwardly because Jadeite and Thetis were seeking to flush out Moon and Mercury. Two days of nothing, and then the captain and his 'consort' were giving a speech in front of a gathered crowd of a few hundred. Three faces were present. One with a short bright blue hair, one with hair in long flowing pigtails tied with odangos, and a third with dark black hair and an aloof appearance who lagged slightly behind the others and was close.

Flush with the power taken into the Orb, Thetis smiled and then spoke words of Power in the ancient language of the Outer Darkness, and the Crew screamed and found themselves transformed into Youma, along with a third of the passengers. Flashes of light followed and Sailor Moon and Sailor Mercury found themselves present. Thetis smiled and as Mercury's fog gripped the room and the ship found arcing blasts of Moon Healing Escalation! undoing her curse, Thetis snarled and formed vast columns of water, aiming them for Mercury and for Moon.

Hino Rei found herself staring at an object in front of her, and she took it in a trance.

_Mars Power Make-up!_

In a brilliant flash of light a surge of powerful heat turned the columns of water into steam and Thetis froze, as did Jadeite. The heat was a brilliant heat, as of the unbound power of flame itself, and from the steam emerged a new Guardian, this one in a red skirt. 

_I am the Pretty Guardian who fights for Love and for Passion. I am Sailor Mars! In the Name of Mars, I'll chastise you_! 

Thetis snarled. Two Senshi, yes. But three?

_No matter, I'll kill you too!_

With that she hurled columns of water, only for Mars to smirk and raise her hands.

_Akuryo Taisan!_

Thetis's powers failed suddenly, and she found herself trying to summon them again, only to find them somehow rendered useless. 

_You!_

With that snarling she leapt at Mars, who blinked calmly and summoned from herself the power flame that was hers, truly and always.

_Burning Mandala!_

Eight balls of flame suddenly appeared, gleaming with a heat that was not the true fire of chemistry but the glowing heat of sorcery, and they slammed into the newly powerless Thetis, who landed on her feet, moaning with the impact, steam rising from her.

_Curse you, Senshi!_

With that, Sailor Moon raised her Tiara, sensing that the rage in Thetis was poised to let her regain the power of Chaos-saturated water magic.

_Moon Tiara Action!_

The tiara in her hands hurled forth and struck the Youma, causing gleaming Chaotic Unlight to erupt from her in beams of light and a wailing antisound to reverberate through the ship, producing a pulse that was and wasn't like sonar, and then she dissolved into a strange kind of chaotic effluvium, which left no traces. Jadeite decided that discretion was the better part of valor and vanished, as the real captain he'd neatly replaced via an allusion woke up, and was to steer the ship back to shore after two days of people trying to make sense of the strange events.

Now empowered as Mars, Hino Rei found herself drawn, with Mizuno Ami, to keep Usagi company even if she could not fully explain why.

Part of her knew that this woman with her shining power that had banished the daemon on the ship was to be the cause of her death. But......there was a connection the fires did not fully explain to her. A good one. And there was in her and Mizuno an end to the loneliness that had haunted her for so long. Rei found herself smiling slightly. Why not enjoy that company before the giant of fire and magma in her dream came to kill them all? Instead of raging against the dying of the light, there would be friendship, an end to loneliness, and some warmth.

_D-BASE, NORTH POLE:_

Her gaze was cold and unwelcoming when he returned.

"That makes two failures, Jadeite. And another Senshi awoken. Draw all three of them out and kill them now, before they draw the other Senshi to them."

"Yes, my Queen." His throat was dry, though he could not explain why, and there was a deep sadness at the thought of killing Sailor Mars, the shining being of flame he'd been so fortunate as to witness.

As he teleported away, Beryl's gaze turned to Kunzite and Zoisite, who were lounging on each other.

"If he fails, you two are next. Do not fail me."

They nodded.

"Three of them against two of us? We would be fools to allow them to do so."

"No doubt Thetis thought so, too."

She turned to them.

"To further even the odds, if he fails. I give to you, Zoisite, the task to awaken the Seven Great Youma."

He blinked.

"You heard me. They will tilt the balance solidly in your favor, the Moon Senshi cannot fight all seven of them, even with Mars and Mercury at her side."

_TSUKINO HOUSE:_

Usagi listened happily to music from a new, rising star. Aino Minako had appeared seemingly out of nowhere as a multi-talented, skilled musician and singer-songwriter whose skills were as hypnotizing as anyone. The one thing that she, Hino, and Mizuno all agreed on, along with Naru, was that Aino's music was their favorite. As she struggled to conjugate verbs, she much more enjoyed "C'est La Vie" to a point that she lost track of the assignment. She did not notice the news showing that Sailor V had taken down a strange and powerful Youma that resembled nothing so much as an Oni of the old text taking on fuller form. After the cruise, she now had more friends than Naru Osaka alone. 

Mizuno the genius, who goaded her to study even when she hated it, and Hino Rei.....

She briefly lost focus even on the dulcet tones of Aino's singing as she thought of Rei, hearts in her eyes. She wanted to know more about her. What was the name of the shrine she looked after-oh yes. Hikawa. That was it. The Hikawa shrine.

"I want to visit that place tomorrow," she mused to no-one.


	17. Thunor's Hammer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jadeite commits himself to a final battle, treacheries unfold, and the last of the Inner Senshi fully awakens.

_EN ROUTE TO THE HIKAWA SHRINE:_

The day that changed Kino Makoto's life forever started with one of those strange and whimsical encounters that would become a later element of mirrors between the Senshi of Thunder and the Wind. In her case, she was walking back to her place, after another lonely day full of administrators and teachers sneering at her for her uniform, when she saw a girl her age in pigtails running in the street, following another one with short, cropped blue hair. Makoto raised an eyebrow and then her eyes went very wide indeed. A car was coming and that bunhead didn't even see it.

Moving with a speed she would only question later, she ran into the street and jerked the bunheaded girl out of the way.

She turned to Makoto and looked up at her with eyes wide and wondering. Makoto's look of disdain did not change much of that, and she simply huffed and told her "Watch where you're going."

As she turned around, she felt a strange presence in the wind, no......three. She shivered, two were of a similar-yet-distinct kind. Both gave the smell and vibe of corpse-winds dancing over the tombs of infinite millennia, but one was simultaneously laced with an element of mystical flame within it and the other with an endless bloodlust. The third was monstrously strong and it was....alien. A battering ram of sheer annihilating force she did not relish meeting. She had sensed these things before, usually in dreams, and then with increasing frequency ever since Sailor V had shown up.

_GATES OF THE HIKAWA SHRINE:_

As Usagi and Ami stood at the shrine in a moment of indecision, they felt the first of the presences Makoto had felt and reached for the henshins that were in their knapsacks, setting them down. Only a few seconds later, Rei stood next to them, and said quietly:

"I felt it too. It's coming."

With a look of determination, following hand signals from Ami they took places based on what she hoped would prove to be the simplest position for them to take.

_NEAR KINO MAKOTO'S APARTMENT:_

The second of the presences began to make its presence manifest when a ritual intended in derision by a young man experimenting with forbidden mystical texts, not the Japanese translation of Alhazred's seminal work but _Von Unausprichliche Kulte_ , nine candles of a suitably horrifying material burning with an eerie flame. Forbidden words banned for millennia with no true understanding of the thing that was banned echoed and then he screamed and fell forward into his own circle. His flesh seemed to burn with flame and to shift, his feet extending into something like claws. His neck lengthened to something like a monstrous vulture, though the beak was more that of a great raptor, save for the entirely prominent and unnatural flames. His skin was flesh no longer but fire woven like feathers, kaleidoscopic and hypnotically visible. The Lord of Change Htarken smiled at the results of the transformation. The Lost Ones were awakening again, and Samus had proven his due as the harbinger of the reawakening of suppressed Chaos.

With that, he casually moved one of his flame-wrought hands and in an effortless display of power blew out the wall of the building.

Kino Makoto froze. Just north of her, the wall of a place had exploded outward with a stupendous force that left that stronger sour-tasting energy ridden with blood. From it stepped a strange creature, akin to the rumors of monsters in the night that were starting to proliferate. Akin to them, but none spoke of a creature like this. It was like a Tengu if a Tengu was meant to ooze fundamental _wrongness._ It moved with an effortless grace, forming a staff of the same kaleidoscopic material as its feathers, standing in the morning air, taking something that was not truly a breath.

Then its eyes turned to gaze at hers with the gaze of infinite depth and galaxies swimming. Light formed in front of her, something like a pen. Makoto regretted nothing of taking it, and in a blinding flash of light an echo like a thunderclap followed, and the Youma froze in mid-attempt to vocalize whatever thing was to come from its mouth.

_Jupiter Power Make-Up!_

Makoto felt the purity of power flowing through her with a glorious rush, and as the brilliant green of her Senshi outfit formed, she felt the still greater undeniable rush of that which was her birthright.

Clouds suddenly appeared overhead, and the daemon turned to her with genuine concern, its spell of shock broken as it prepared to summon great power. From the flash of light materialized a very tall woman in an outfit again to that of a Sailor, and the presence of the being awakened intensified the power of the daemon, which hurled a blast that the Senshi seemed to limbo beneath with an effortless grace, appearing on the right side of the blast. 

_"I am the Pretty Guardian who fights for Love and for Courage. I am Sailor Jupiter! I'll fill you with regret, it'll leave you numb!_ "

Other Senshi had to cautiously experiment with their power to discover abilities akin to flight. Such was Jupiter's relief at being awakened and released that levitation came naturally. Levitation, and her eyes began to glow with the power that was hers as it had always been. Lighting sparked from her tiara to her eyes and back again, and around her fingers.

The Lord of Change looked on in wonder. It had been millennia since the Senshi of Thunder had been awakened, and of all the Senshi, she was the third mightiest after Pluto and as likely to relish brute combat as the Senshi of the Wind. Only the Senshi of the infinite oceans was stronger and he was fortunate he was not within their territory when the fool summoned him.

Sailor Jupiter raised her hand, the hand sparkling with lightning, and then in a downward motion bolts of thunder fell like fire from Heaven. lancing into the daemon's flesh. The bolts were awesome in their strength. First one, then two, and then on the fourth, the daemon burst with an explosion akin to that of a car bomb, taking with it the front half of the building. Sailor Jupiter landed, the lightning fading, and then looked at the building, and immediately moved to rescue any civilians who needed it. By a fortunate circumstance there were only two, one of whom had fortunately avoided injury in a bathtub, the other much more grievously wounded and taken to a hospital.

In a single bound Jupiter leapt from the hospital to an alley near her apartment, detransforming. Jupiter entered the alley, it was Kino Makoto who left it, newly empowered and feeling something, a sense of togetherness. She was not alone now, Sailor V, at least, could and would understand.

She went to her apartment and sat back, relaxing and listening to the new Aino Minako single that had come out yesterday. Such a lovely voice, that Aino, even if she was a bit of a ditz.

_GATE OF THE HIKAWA SHRINE:_

Jadeite stepped forward, bringing out one of the Four Swords of the Four Heavenly Kings. In memories so distant they were more singular flashes of energy than anything else, he remembered that he was once the King of the South, and his sword gleamed with an element of fire, like that of the one he had long ago been bonded with. Images of fire, and of a brief and complex set of relationships before something changed made him pause for a moment. Three flashes of light followed, and saturated in Chaos, the Heavenly King of the South, now Beryl's King of Illusions, strode forth.

Sailors Moon, Mercury, and Mars were uncertain of what to expect. None of them had truly faced a foe like this before, and when Jadeite cast his illusion, rawness with their power meant at first that they took the change from the gate of the Hikawa Shrine to somewhere else without much hesitation. They were in the ashes of a broken palace, and against them strode not Jadeite, but a towering being in golden armor, with a sword that gleamed with a brilliant soulfire. Jadeite's skin had become brown, the hue of Earth, the mother of all things, and his eyes gleamed with golden light. The image of the Anathema, in most ways. Instead of the double-headed eagle there was a jagged star and within the star, Metallia's flame. The sigils of holiness in the true Anathema were wrought into the imagery of Chaos, and the Soulflame that was naturally a brilliant gold was a searing whitish-red that corrupted and befouled what stared into it too long.

Mars was on the right, Moon in the middle, and Mercury on the left.

_Children of the Lunar Kingdom....._

His voice was nowhere near a perfect duplication of the Anathema's. It was lower and rumbling with a sense of doom and blood within it.

_I bring you to this place that your existence and blight upon nature may be ended. You are, all of you, atavisms. Beings out of time, and out of space. I am here to return to you to the truth and to save existence from itself._

He pointed the blade to Mars first. His power sought to turn her very willpower into a set of shackles to hold her, to keep her out of the battle. He could not name the impulses that made him do this, and he didn't give a damn. It was done.

Mercury, Senshi of water, found herself in a ring of fire and smoke intent to deny her power to access her element.

And now for the Moon Senshi.

Out of all of them, Moon, you are the worst. You are the last of a dead breed, there are none like you left. Your kind died, thousands of years ago, and for good reason. There was a princess of the kingdom, once. She is dead and her mother with her. Now.....there is only a Senshi left of that place.

He raised the sword of fire, holding it two-handed, in a mocking salute.

_Your allies are helpless, little abomination. And now there is only you._

Sailor Moon's stare was not the frightened one he expected, she if anything displayed a grace and dignity that shocked him. Not near as much as the brilliant glowing hue of the symbol of the Moon on her forehead. His eyes went very wide indeed.

_You....you're dead. You can't possibly b-_

Mars, on the right, recognizing the nature of her shackles focused on the volcanic elements of her power. Like pressure in a pressure cooker they built and then his illusionary shackles burst, brilliant holy flame burning as Mercury, grasping instinctively how Mars overcame her illusions, summoned her fog, and as she seemed to vanish in it the illusion of the flame broke down.

Sailor Moon levitated, a being of shining brilliance, and for just a moment within moments, Jadeite, still empowered by his illusion of being something else saw in her eyes a gaze he likewise fully remembered.

_THE SILVER MILLENNIUM:_

_The King of the North had captured the sorceress with curious ease. In her flowing robes of blue, Beryl strode toward him._

_"You are close to the man I love. He wishes a tie to that forbidden Princess of that shining little realm of beauty. You will help me take her down, and we shall reign in victory forever as Metallia's greatest rulers. "_

_A bluish-silver-greenish-pinkish flame grew in her hand and he could not take his gaze away from it. Mars would hate him for this._

_THE LAST BATTLE:_

_Standing over the impaled corpse of Mars, a howl of grief echoed from his throat as the last light of the Jadeite who had been died in that moment. Then he saw her, the Princess, clad in a white dress, a haunting glowing beauty the more powerful for the Chaos energies that saturated him. Before, the light of the Senshi was soothing and calming, now......now it was painful._

And it was that same light that gazed at him here. She removed her tiara and his illusion fell, leaving a man clad in dark grey, hand in front of his face, eyes starting to bleed blood.

_Moon Tiara Action!_

In a blinding flash of light the healing power of the Moon and of its energies slammed into him, hurling him backward, away from the shrine. He lay, still and bloodstained. As the light faded, Moon detransformed, and stared at her hands. holding her head.

He heard the voice of the blue-haired one shouting "Usagi! What's wrong?"

Usagi. That was her real name.

As the women went into the shrine, the shadows formed into the image of the Senshi clad in that Samurai-esque plate armor, her hair of darkness seeming at points to merge into the armor, The thrice-damned Mikaboshi. She removed the wicked-seeming sword from its scabbard, and squatted by him.

"I know who she is," he gasped from bloodied teeth. "I know who Sailor Moon is. Her name is U-"

The blade in her hand suddenly jammed into his heart.

Now now, little Shitennou, if we were an army fighting a war that would be valuable intelligence. We're not. You're not. You never were. Chaos doesn't care about Kingdoms, boy. It is infinite malice, it desires graves, not palaces. I will give Beryl your regards.

As her blade drank his blood and Jadeite crumbled into dust, blowing away on the wind, the Mikaboshi stood up and gazed at the shrine. A holy place, that. It burned with a brilliant light in its wards that meant that it was painful to see, and she had to blink away blood. Snarling, she leapt into the skies, hurling herself to the North Pole.

_OUTSKIRTS OF THE FUTURE MUGEN GAKKEN:_

The Architect of Fear had seen enough. There was something of this Dark Kingdom in the North Pole, then the land of the Midnight Sun. It was not his concern, yet, to face them directly, though if they kept attacking him it would become that way. The first target, the first of the False Senshi, the so-called Animates, had fallen easily. Rural Siberian Russia in the post-Soviet era was ludicrously easy to infiltrate, but he had been arrogant and now other societies would be on watch for one like him. First Russia, and then.....

His eyes looked to four marked locations in the sprawling realm of the People's Republic of China. Four false Senshi. He would only be able to target the first in the current window of opportunity. Quietly he gathered to himself weaponry. He left behind him a psionic construct solid to the mortal eye, calculating that his power would ensure none would notice that it did not eat, blink, drink, shit, or do any basic mortal functions. Insofar as people knew, Irving Christoffels would be supervising the new Mugen Gakken Academy, beginning with its first building, Tomoe Laboratories, named after its murdered master.

Stepping a comfortable distance away, ensuring via a quiet surveyance from a drone that no unfortunate teleportation accidents would see him die an unglamorous and humiliating death, he entered the co-ordinates and in a brilliant flash of light with a thunderclap of its own, he vanished.

_HIKAWA SHRINE:_

Tears ran down Rei's face for reasons she could not explain, and would do so for that night and at random points the next few weeks. She had faced a monster, a being that was no longer human in any real sense, that had hidden his true nature behind illusions. And yet the sight of him hurled back by Sailor Moon's blast and his broken body awoke a sorrow she would not come to understand for some time yet.

_D-POINT, NORTH POLE:_

Beryl froze when the Mikaboshi materialized from the shadows, clad in her armor of flowing darkness.

I am sorry, your majesty. Jadeite sought to confront Mars and Mercury and Moon, and they proved too much for him. Moon's Tiara slew him. I could not reach him in time to save his life.

Beryl's eyes were wide.

"Jadeite is dead."

It is as I said. The power of the Moon cannot but kill the things of Chaos if we are too incautious around it.

She steepled her hands.

"I made an error in sending a single Shitennou who had the prospect of his memories awakening against his old love."

Her gaze turned to Zoisite and Kunzite.

"Go. Find the crystals to awaken the Seven Great Youma from where the Momotaro buried them. One Shitennou fallen in an error is a mistake, and one that Chaos will let me rectify. The Senshi have not, bar the Outers, directly broken a Greater Daemon."

_**And Samus?** _

The Mikaboshi's voice seemed gloating and mocking.

"I know what it calls itself but it is no greater anything. Just a jumped up helldog with an attitude problem."

The snort of laughter made her want to revise her views at first and then sent her into a murderous rage, but then she took a deep breath and calmed down.

"As I said, awaken the Seven Great Youma. The Oni will be your allies."

Zoisite and Kunzite, holding hands, bowed before her.

The Mikaboshi turned to her.

_**While they seek to do this, the Outers will begin to be drawn into this.** _

"They were never meant to awaken with the Inners. Something changed the timeline, before we awoke."

The Mikaboshi nodded.

_**My point exactly. If the Outers become drawn into it, a few Dead Screams and Deep Submerges will destroy the Shitennou and draw you in directly.** _

Beryl nodded in turn to concede the point.

"Your alternative is what?"

**_You seek to awaken merely the Oni the Peach-Boy slew. There is another thing that will keep the Outers busy._ **

Her hand pointed to the waters outside Tokyo Bay. 

After all, when Susanoo slew the dragon, it was there he tossed its corpse. So let us awaken it, and see how the Outers deal with a dragon of the depths awakened and befouled.

The Mikaboshi's smile was not a welcoming one.

_**Susanoo and the children of the Age of Gold are removed in far distant times. Now, with the new Kami as these Senshi active.....can they match their elders?** _

"Very well. Go forth and awaken your monster."

The Mikaboshi laughed and vanished.

She then turned to another creature, one of her rarer male Youma.

"Gekido-Jin, follow that thing and kill it. It is not an ally, I smelled Jadeite's blood on it."

The Oni smiled with its cruel bestial grin from its porcine face, grasping its warhammer, and vanished in its own sickly bloody cloud.

Beryl smiled. She was no fool, and the Mikaboshi would be punished for slaying one of her closest allies. Chaos's powers were vast, but only a few could wield them without becoming monsters, and they.....they were irreplaceable.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As might be gathered here, my take on the enemies of Sailor Moon is going to draw more heavily on various mythologies. Metallia is not merely a random fire demon but a rogue entity of Muspelheim, the Shitennou are the fallen Heavenly Kings of Buddhist Lore......and the Youma that crumble into dust are actual oni and demons of various lore. And beyond them all, the distant shadow of the far future where there is only war stirs.


	18. Earth and the Moon:

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Foolish decisions are made, the Dark Lady leaves her Dark Throne from the North where shadows lie, and Zoisite and Kunzite begin the quest to awaken the Seven Great Youma.

TOKYO, JUUBAN ACADEMY:

Chiba Mamoru had been concerned when his favorite target for his games had proved herself intermittently present and reliable with things. He missed Bunhead and there was the matter of his random transformations into Tuxedo Kamen, and his relying on that cane of his to hew down daemons that had sought to target the Senshi while ne'er were they aware of it. When the most recent battle between the Senshi and one of their foes had occurred....he'd been watching in the shadows, casually eliminating the intended help that Jadeite had intended to have at his disposal. Then there was that thunderstorm. Strange things were happening, and he did not know what to make of them, or about them. Shrugging casually, he gave a friendly smile to a new student, his same age range, and social bracket.

"Hello, Kaioh."

Michiru gave him a level stare and a brief inclining of her head, which was from her equivalent to the more profuse greetings from the blonde....woman....who was always around her. Tenoh Haruka had begun to make a name for herself, and the basis of her legend, from the beginning of her running competitions. She'd been something of a wunderkind in the past, and now her speed was accelerating still further. Nearly to superhuman levels. She was from a similar bracket, but he'd seen nothing of their families, and that concerned him. Even if their parents had been slain by.....whatever manner of wild animal had done the murders, something should have welcomed them and taken them in. Not his business, he shrugged.

Since the day with the thunderstorm and the conflict where he'd seen the monstrous yet strangely familiar Jadeite, it had been blessedly quiet.

For her own part, Tenoh Haruka had enjoyed the recognition that her skills, at last, gave her some peace with everything. Events had been kaleidoscopic, awakening, fighting the aliens with Sailor V, and the impressions of a terrible Chaos they supervised and watched the Inners fight while Setsuna shielded them all. And then there were those _other_ things. She was a tomboy, and proud of it. She was a fast runner, and still more proud of that. But feelings like she had for Michiru, for the Senshi of the vast ocean, a figure of such power that she dwarfed her own, and like her element both profound in depths and concealing....things....within did not suit easily with her.

Haruka knew at one level that if not fully gay, she was mostly so, but now she was entrapped in a terrible cycle of transformations into the mighty Sailor Uranus, and battles against monsters and being stuck watching young girls like her fighting other monsters. Watching, waiting.

Michiru's visions, and what the winds, which she was master thereof, told her one thing. Destiny had fixed Sky and Sea, and the furtive desperate seeking for humanity of the old Silver Millennium offered new prospects. But Tenoh Haruka would be damned if she'd yield to desires carnal and romantic because some long-dead superhuman had felt them as a relief for aching loneliness.

She was mostly gay, but not entirely, and she was bound by desperation against the iron wheel of destiny and its remorseless prowess. Such feelings in another timeline would have led the original Uranus to a desperate and poorly-conceived kiss of Sailor Moon, an act that haunted her and her relationship with Michiru for months after, and underscored her rivalry with the Starlights. There was no Princess recognized as such yet, only a Moon Senshi who displayed signs of surpassing power, and there were impulses, new and very powerful.

To transform into the Senshi of the Wind was to command the wind itself. All Senshi could fly, but Haruka was the battering ram, the one meant to hurl into a crowd and scatter them. Something like a character from American comics she'd found amusing. A scientist struck by an atom bomb that became an ugly oversized green man. She was the Hulk, meant to keep foes off balance. Pluto was mistress of Time, a power awesome in its effects and ill-understood. Saturn, the little girl they all loved, and their younger sister, was in truth the mightiest of them all. She was Senshi of Death and of Rebirth, but the nature of her power was such that she, and all of them, but dimly grasped it. Monsters that managed to escape her and Neptune and Pluto that faced Saturn were put down with insultingly trivial ease.

If she was the battering ram, Saturn was a time on target barrage, remorseless destructive force that very little in its path could survive.

And of them all, it was Michiru, that same Michiru she had those feelings for, who casually slipped out of the erudite and rich snotty Kaioh mentality into a brutal and stunningly effective force on the battlefield. Saturn's powers were the ones meant for annihilation, but it was Michiru's destructive nature that made for it. The prospect of having those feelings for that girl, of trying to romance _that,_ the unbound majesty of the Ocean, scared her. Always-impulsive, Haruka decided to take a gamble in her personal life that would wind up backfiring in ways she could not fully foresee, and strode up to one of those very few men she did feel some desire for, tapping him on the shoulder.

She did not know or sense her, but Michiru saw this, and saw that gaze, and her brows furrowed thunderously. A smell of the briny depths of the vast ocean permeated the school for a moment, but it neither stopped nor dissuaded the path that was set in motion.

Setsuna, who was a few steps behind Michiru, also saw things and made a quiet sight and placed her palm on her head. No less pleasant burden than seeing events taking a path that could only end badly.

That evening, dinner in the Meioh-Kaioh household was silent, save Hotaru excitedly talking about her day. The older women did not wish her to become part or pawn of something else, and to Michiru's greater fury, Haruka acted like nothing untoward had happened and was perfectly animate in conversation with Hotaru. Fast as the wind she might be, but Destiny would not be denied.

For his part, Mamoru had seen Bunhead again and done his usual routine holding her binder where she flailed like a broken doll trying to get it, as he laughed. He eventually handed it to her and pinched her on the cheek and walked off whistling. No transformations that night, though the sickly feeling of Dark Energies began to grow.

The next day, the first of six young women went missing.

PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CHINA, MILITARY BASE OUTSIDE A PLAIN IN OUTER MONGOLIA:

In a brilliant flash of light, the Architect of Fear strode forward, empowered by the absence of a veil of secrecy. The reports of monsters in Japan were proliferating, and so were various hidden illnesses elsewhere, as the Dark Kingdom's broader networks worked in secret, in the absence of Senshi. The lesson was not lost on him, and it was one he vowed to implement with his own Death Busters constructs when the time was right. Such an illness had arisen here in Outer Mongolia, near a secret base lost to the pages of time. It was compounded by reports of brutal horrors, of a thing that was human but not truly human that snuck into houses at night and rampaged at will. A small company of the PLA, then a second were sent. The first infantry, and what was found after the fact when radio silence had fallen for several days was a gruesome scene worthy of a slaughterhouse. Then an equivalent force of tanks, and the tanks were equally destroyed, but a tank caught an image of the monster.

Mortal power was useless against what was for all practical purposes an Animate of mortal origin, empowered with a ruined and twisted version of the power of the Wind Senshi's force. This one was more human than some of the others, though not as much as the Chaos-saturated thing in Japan that flitted between it and the North Pole. It was waiting for him when he arrived.

She was clad in a twisted mirror of Senshi armor, more in the line of tank armor, and her gaze was that of a doll's eyes. Dead and unblinking.

So here we are then, said Heshatani, discarding all pretense.

The thing that looked at him smiled and lurched forward in a jerking fashion with head at an unnatural angle, the winds howling in a gale. One of the bursts of power sufficient to shred and flay a mortal man and explode the armor those men concealed themselves in slammed into Yrvin's telekinetic shield that enveloped him like a sphere. Slammed into it and stopped cold, the backlash hurling the entity back. She landed roughly with a low and bestial snarl, flipping herself around.

They didn't know what they were doing when they made you. How like us they are, and they were. We made monsters, too, but we were aiming to do it, under the impression we could control them.

You can't be controlled at all, can you?

The thing lunged at him and Pharaoh 90's eyes glowed and in a single overpowering blast of pressure, the Animate's body burst into a mixture of gore and light.

Thankfully you could not be controlled. The ones that can be, that have a mind and greater will, even if they look less human than you did....I do not relish the thought of fighting those things.

He turned abruptly to see several armored vehicles moving toward him. A much larger armored force, a division, mixing APCs and tanks. He smirked.

Business before pleasure.

With the co-ordinates set, a star lit itself on the plains and vanished, re-igniting outside the Mugen Gakken, where his construct faded into nothingness and a whisp of something like mist and electroplasm. Cracking his neck, Yrvin Heshatani stepped back into his residence.

Zoisite and Kunzite looked at each other.

"So that's the thing Jadeite was talking about."

It was Kunzite who spoke next.

"Mechanical teleportation, not of Chaos or of Senshi design."

Zoisite spoke next.

"This is.....concerning. He derailed Jadeite's plans and probably was what really killed him."

They looked at each other.

"Well, he might be able to make a pretty flash of light, but I doubt he'll handle those Oni any better than the Senshi will. And now that we know where he is...."

They quietly sent the co-ordinates to Queen Beryl, who smiled coldly. She'd sat on her throne long enough, letting her Senshi handle things. Let this lord of Pharaoh 90 industries puff and destroy her Youma indeed. She would see to making sure he was obedient.....personally. 

Beryl left her throne and called the energies of Chaos to her, teleporting with confidence. Metallia was her shield, and there was every reason to suspect that this could only go smoothly.


	19. Beryl vs Pharaoh 90: Big Bad All Out Attack!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Deciding to handle the minor annoyance of the first stirrings of the new, improved Death Busters, Beryl decides to handle events personally.

_Zoisite and Kunzite's Base:_

"Well, my love.....how are we doing so far?" 

"We've got three of our victims, and we managed to have the fortune that those idiot mortals had one of those crystals in a museum for us to take." 

Kunzite's nose twitched.

"Seven Youma, or Seven Oni, as it were."

He looked at the various crystals.

"The last of them is the Rainbow Crystal and it's at that same shrine where Jadeite died."

Kunzite nodded. Each of the Seven Oni gleamed with a brilliant and terrible power, their fanged faces gleaming with catlike grins. He nosetwitched. He knew daemons were real, he and his fellows worked with them. But this.....

_TOKYO SHORELINE:_

The Amatsu Mikaboshi knelt by the coast, calling into herself the power of Chaos. She had known of Beryl's treachery since the Witch-Queen had voiced it. and she had known Beryl would know. This was good. It would make the Dark Kingdom act unwisely. They had had their chance with Chaos and Queen Serenity had outmaneuvered them in the end. Now she waited. She could awaken the Orochi, yes. In a future timeframe she would, as a means to flush out her deeper quarry. For now she waited. Then she smelt it, and knew it was there.

"Beryl sends her regards."

She stood up and turned around. She faced another like herself, clad in a more traditional Samurai armor, wielding a great warhammer in his hands. He was dark green, porcine, with thick fangs jutting like tusks from his lower jaw.

_**I don't care.** _

"You will."

The Oni lunged forward and she drew her greatsword and casually hewed him in twain, snorting as she turned away, only to whirl back when the Oni reformed, this time a third larger than he had been, smiling coldly.

"As I said, you will. Nice sword you've got there. Too bad it can't stop me. As long as I touch the shores of the Earth, my mother, nothing can kill me. It's why Beryl had me watching the ruins of the Dark Kingdom."

He moved at her, the hammer grown in size with him, and she hewed him in quarters this time. He reformed faster, and still larger, and the Mikaboshi frowned. This wasn't going to be fun, nor pleasant. Seven more times did she tear the Oni apart, and seven more times he resurrected and grew the greater. Her eyes narrowed. He could be reborn within the soil of the Earth. If he were to be moved off of it.....

In a sudden frenzied motion the Mikaboshi impaled the Oni on her sword and hurled himself and herself upward, relying on the power of Chaos to strengthen her. As the air grew thinner, the Oni became weaker, and the power of Chaos began to gleam with the glow of murdered stars from the blade.

Shouldn't have told me your weakness, Oni.

In a brilliant flash of light detected by satellites worldwide the Oni was annihilated. None of them detected the human-like object that turned to wind a course for the North Pole.

_**PHARAOH 90 INDUSTRIES:** _

Beryl materialized out of the energies she'd called, going to the lair of the creature with the brute strength to destroy her Youma with ease. The Youma were not her, she had not risen to the rule of the Dark Kingdom by being as weak, or ultimately as disposable, as they were. She anticipated using a blast to destroy the door, but it proved unlocked. The building was only partially constructed, save for a chair that had no business belonging in a partially finished thing like this. It was a Command Throne suited for a starship of a design horribly familiar to her.

_**Hello, Beryl. When last you encountered my order, one of my predecessors warned you. Chaos does not give, it only destroys and burns.** _

Her frown intensified.

"You killed my Youma."

_**Your most powerful still live, and still guard that base of yours.** _

"I do not squander my strength casually."

_**Which is why you've come here, to the belly of the beast of something that is beyond you and your insipid little squabble with the Moon Senshi over your reincarnated lover.** _

"How can you know that Endymion was-"

_**You have returned, Beryl. So have the Senshi of all the planets. Even the Outers have awakened. Not because of you, you were never a sufficient threat to awaken them all. Only Neptune, the mightiest of them. If they have awakened, so has the prince of the Earth, and so has the Princess of the Moon.** _

"There is no Princess awake now, only a Senshi of the Moon."

_**Yes, quite.** _

The shadowy reaches around the throne dispelled and a stout giant rose, shining eyes blazing toward her, as Beryl summoned into herself the firey power of Metallia.

"I am no Youma, creature. You won't stop me. Your predecessors couldn't."

_**Oh they could have. We just didn't.....care. We still don't. I'm cleaning up their mess, and the errors of human governments in making monsters to make Senshi of their own, cloning a star-seed, of all things. They knew nothing of what they were doing.** _

His smile was brilliant in that coal-hued flesh marked with the deep reddish-orange blotches, his golden eyes starting to shine with the fury of his Psionic power.

_**Well, girlie, come on then!** _

With a deep echoing infrasound boom, Beryl's power blasted out in a roiling column of mystical flame, as Yrvin Heshatani casually summoned a telekinetic shield. She was, he reflected, entirely right that she was nowhere near as weak as her minions when the flames intensified to a tremendous heat that set his partially built building aflame and caused his shield to explode in a thunderous boom.

**_Formidable indeed._ **

With that he raised his right hand fingers curled, then clenched them.

Beryl grabbed her throat and fell to her knees, the power choking her astronomical.

_**Not the gesture the thing in the armor in that movie used, but it'll do.** _

His smile was cold.

_**I am not some simpering sorcerer obsessed with the necessity to have someone never meant for me to have, girlie.** _

Beryl's eyes flashed with sheer rage and she placed her hand on the ground and a pulse of magic erupted that blasted Pharaoh 90 off his feet, disrupting his focus and the power that was close to killing her.

"He was mine, he is mine, he will be mine. You say Princess Serenity lives! I will find her, I will kill her, and when I offer her eyes the last sight of Endymion claiming me, then she will know in the end, Chaos always wins."

Pharaoh 90 casually levitated into the air, then blinked. A telekinetic blow of stupendous force hurled Beryl straight over Tokyo Bay, followed by three more in turn, Beryl landing with a sickening crunch near the Panama Canal.

As she raised herself, hands sparking, and cricked her neck, Pharaoh 90 descended from the skies hovering just over her.

_**So tiresome.** _

Pharaoh 90 sought to extend his telepathic power in sheer brute force into Beryl's mind, and Beryl in turn sought to open her mind to strength of the Queen beyond her who truly empowered her. A small silver of Metallia's strength surged out, and in Beryl's mindscape, Lord Heshatani found himself donning the full garb of an Imperial Bizjarran Metanormal meant for combat, his helmet's sensors showing him a vast shadowy figure of molten magma and a vaguely feminine shape.

**That is ENOUGH!**

The magma-like fist hurled into him and Yrvin Heshatani staggered, blood oozing from his mouth and nose, bent over.

Beryl raised herself.

"Kneel before me, pledge yourself to the Dark Kingdom."

_**Her, I respect. Her power, I respect. You?** _

In rage, Yrvin lost the pretense of fun and unleashed a wave of telekinetic pressure powerful enough to squeeze her with pressure greater than the deepest part of the sea, leaving Beryl in a stalemate lost when he mouthed the name of her great love, her focus slipping enough she fell unconscious.

Striding over to her, spitting his blood onto the ground casually, Yrvin knelt beside her, his hand on her face.

_**Forget that I exist, that you came here. As far as you remember, you sought to seek the monster that slew your youma, and you succeeded.** _

Content that he had succeeded, Yrvin staggered over to the outer edges of a slum, summoning a psionic healing trance and a veil. He had faced Beryl and survived, but if he faced Metallia.....with a new respect for his foes and far greater caution, Yrvin gave into his healing trance.

Beryl would awaken two hours later in Panama, of all places, staring up and around. None came to see her, reports of Devilry at work and a grinning monster with brilliant yellow eyes had faded to leave an unconscious woman in a purple dress with a horned tiara there. The feeling of ominous nature that echoed from her meant none dared approach her, and when she awoke, a casual forgetting spell served as her shield as she teleported back to D-Point.

She'd killed the monster that killed her Youma after a brutal battle. The lesson was not lost on her. It ultimately didn't matter if Kunzite and Zoisite succeeded or failed, she could and would redeem everything if she pulled things off right.

_HIKAWA SHRINE, TWO WEEKS LATER:_

Four girls were missing now, and Usagi, Rei, and Ami were meeting together to discuss what could be done about it. They had fought, and destroyed, singly and together plenty of monsters. Random thunderstorms had accompanied very public battles with others, and the Senshi involved in them, called "Lady Thor" by some more derisory media, and "Thunder Kami" by other more reverent ones, had yet to meet them. Tuxedo Kamen had become a frequent figure accompanying them, his cane displaying magical power, as he worked with Sailor Moon seamlessly. Usagi had come to adore Tuxedo Mask, and went out of her way to avoid Chiba Mamoru, the task simpler when she had new friends beyond Osaka Naru. As the disappearances increased, so did the climate of fear. The schools were closed, a curfew imposed. Only Senshi were exempt from the curfew, given their seemingly nominal ages. The disappearances of these girls were not random, they were from deliberately selected parts of Tokyo. And a pattern.

Rei was searching through lore, only to freeze. She pointed them to the sites in question, and showed them the story it was connected to.

"Momotaro?"

The skepticism in Ami's voice was as palpable as the mists she conjured.

"A children's story?"

"Each of these girls vanishes and there are craters near where they do. I think each of these places is where one of the Oni was buried after the adventure." 

"So that would mean that whatever's behind this is here," as Ami pointed to a spot where unknown to all of them, Zoisite and Kunzite had indeed built their base and casually begun to erect the means to awaken the Seven Oni. Each of the hosts slumbered with one of the Oni-crystals on their foreheads, in the timeless sleep of a mystical trance. 

"So what does this mean?"

"It gives us a place to look."

As they all nodded with determination, they felt a powerful pulse of energy and the start of gathering thunderclouds.

NEAR THE GAME CENTER ARCADE:

When Zoisite and Kunzite had made their latest abduction, they had hoped that the absence of the use of magical methods would let more of their searches go forth undetected. Unfortunately they had found the stone of the fifth of the Oni right next to the Arcade and merrily abducted a brown-haired girl, Naru Osaka having arrived just in time to wait for Usagi and her new friends to meet her when they were done talking at the Hikawa Shrine. When they had done so, they saw a blonde-haired man charging toward them, telling them to leave her alone. As they prepared to call upon their powers, a brilliant flash of light followed and with it thunderclouds gathered.

One of the Senshi, damn it all. Not the one that killed Jadeite.

She was magnificent, hovering with her bright green Fuku visible, and the power of the storm visible in her eyes, tiara, and hands. Thunderbolts rained toward them and the Shitennou hastily fled, Zoisite launching a bolt at a car that transformed into a horrid techno-organic monster that bellowed in a sound like the honking of a car. A set of brutal lightning bolts that launched at it reduced it back to a smouldering, smoking car, but by then the girl, who Kino Makoto had seen with that bunhead, was gone. After she'd landed and detransformed slightly away from the arcade, she found herself turning to see a very familiar girl with a mask behind her.

"Hello Jupiter."

"Sailor V?" She squeaked.

"How is it you go from this flying badass hurling lightning like Thor to stammering when you see me?"

"You're a superhero!" 

"Yeah, and you turned a Youma into a car with lightning."

Kino's nose twitched.

"You have a point."

"I know where the other Senshi are. I think the two of us need to pay them a visit."

With that, she took Makoto's hand into her own, and then the two vanished in Senshi teleportation.

When they arrived at the Hikawa shrine, Makoto was awed and slightly disoriented. 

"It might behoove you to transform," said Sailor V quietly.

"Why?"

"With the kind of news you're going to give them it's better they know you're a Senshi and not one of the Enemy."

On that cryptic note, Jupiter lived anew, and started at Venus with wonder, a flash of memory asserting itself, then shook her head. 

_OUTER SENSHI RESIDENCE:_

Setsuna stood up, eyes wide.

"What's wrong?" Neptune asked, noticing this first, because of course she would. 

"The enemy has revealed herself."

"Who?"

"Beryl."

That single word had Michiru's thin lips purse more tightly.

"Haruka should have been here by now."

Setsuna sighed. Michiru had been irritated since Haruka had mentioned that date with her new beau and was prone to lash out and take her anger out on others. Only Haruka could make her lose her composure enough and Setsuna did not like it.

"She will be here soon."

Hotaru was the one that spoke next, quietly, with the voice of someone far older than she: "So do we introduce ourselves to the Inners yet?"

"Not yet."

Setsuna pointed to a building, the same building that Ami and Michiru both had identified.

"There. Just near the Kenkun Shrine. This is where we will meet."

"Why there?"

"Because it's there they intend to awaken the Seven Oni and embody the seventh in a ritual that is.....dangerous."

Michiru's eyebrow raised.

"How dangerous?"

"Enough."

Haruka's car pulled in, and Haruka returned with a strange look on her face. Some satisfaction warring with guilt and confusion, and Michiru took a quiet moment of relief, then anger surged to replace it, her mask back up.

As she stepped in, she said "What's with the map?"

"Didn't the wind show you something dangerous is going on?"

"The wind, the news noting those girls are disappearing, and that thunderstorm near the Arcade center."

"Thunderstorm? The weather's clear."

"It's not weather, Michiru. It's the Senshi of Jupiter."

Her eyes widened.

"She's that powerful?"

"Yes. The Inners, on their own, should have sufficed to defeat this threat but we are awakened with them, earlier than we should be."

They nodded.

"So we will not sit back and let them face Beryl and Metallia alone. When they fight the Seven Oni, it shall be Seven Oni against eight Senshi."

"Why are there fewer monsters now?"

"I don't know. I think whatever happened with Beryl must have changed their way of doing things." 

With that, Haruka nodded, and then went over to Hotaru.

"So, Firefly, how was your day?"

Zoisite and Kunzite's base, just north of the Kenkun Shrine:

When Queen Beryl stood there personally to greet them, Zoisite and Kunzite were....concerned.

"I have come into possession of news of grave importance."

"Oh?"

"The Princess of the Moon lives. So does Endymion."

They blinked.

"Kill the Senshi with the Oni, but there is a new task, one that I am setting my Youma to do. Well, the Youma and Nephrite." 

"What?"

"If the Princess has returned, so has the abhorred crystal. We find one, we find the other. We find them, we find Endymion."

Her smile briefly was dreamy and more of the Beryl-that-was.

It swiftly restored itself to the Beryl-that-is.

"We will find the Princess, and I will kill her, and the last thing she will see is Endymion and I together again."

Her laughter was cold.

"I killed the thing you showed me with those co-ordinates. Well done. Queen Metallia approves."

As she returned to D-Point, she was confident. Kill the Senshi, find the Silver Crystal, reclaim Endymion.

Then she saw the Mikaboshi slouched on her command throne, waiting for her, those fangs visible with a horrid Cheshire grin on her face.


	20. Koumajutsu

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As Zoisite and Kunzite prepare to summon the Seven Oni, the Inner Senshi finally meet. Greater schemes begin to be hatched, and the last battle with the Dark Kingdom draws nigh

D-POINT:

You tried to kill me, little Queen.

Beryl's gaze was uneven.

**_You did not succeed. A shame for you that you did not. It is not yet time to reward you as is the will of Chaos, but when it is that time....._ **

A swift motion and Beryl found herself hoisted in the air by a single hand around her throat, the fanged mouth of the Mikaboshi grinning and her eyes sparking with the light of murdered stars.

**_I will enjoy it. For you, and for the Jotunn that squats in the Sun and has been there these long years._ **

With that the Mikaboshi vanished in that horrid equivalent of Senshi teleportation that was its to claim.

Beryl turned to her DD Girls, the last resort, more powerful than the Shitennou. Five Youma, each empowered by Chaos itself, the chieftain the undivided focus of it, the other four specialized.

 _Soon, my pretties,_ a voice boomed. It was not hers. It was less a tectonic rumble like those of the more powerful Yokai of this realm and more of a psychic firestorm. The _y shall go to you, all of them. And we shall slay them all, and I, Metallia, shall be last queen but queen of all the worlds._

HIKAWA SHRINE:

Tsukino Usagi, Hino Rei, and Mizuno Ami would in later years come to enjoy the irony of where and how they'd first met Sailors V and Jupiter. It was not in the arcade, as would be the case with the civilian identities of the Outer Senshi. It was not in the school facing a monster. It was the two of them standing out, Jupiter tall and detached but the thunderstorm-might within her the unbound force of one of the forces next to which even the mightiest sorcery and human artifice at times seemed weak. V the shorter but stern general, and some instinctive realization of this had the other Senshi quiet, pensive. The attitude of junior officers facing the high command after a long absence, seeemingly.

It was Usagi who spoke up first:

"Why are you here?"

"We have news about one of your friends, Tsukino. Or should we say, Sailor Moon."

Usagi started.

"But but-how do you know?"

"I know because.....it is my duty to know."

"Okay."

Sailor V's smile was colder, and for a moment it was not the Sailor V they knew but the old and brutal warlord of the past, who had commanded the senshi with terror in her incarnations of Golden and Silver Ages alike.

"Well, uh....come on in."

The smile that saw the tall, if shorter than Jupiter, raven-haired woman who hesitated but did not miss her more elegant words was....the best word for it was love-struck. It made Hino flinch a little and the smile on V's face vanished. Ah well, there would be time for such things. The Senshi stepped into the shrine, for what would become the first of the Senshi meetings in this Shrine, the template that faced them all.

SHRINE OF THE SEVEN ONI:

The ritual that faced them was a strange one. A practicioner of the art of Onmyodo would have recognized a circle akin to those of a Shikigami but larger. They would have seen with consternation the symbolism and imagery woven into it. Oni, the most wicked of all Kami, the kind sealed by heroes who accessed dim shadows of the power of the Dark Kingdom and the Senshi, for magic never truly faded. Seven Oni, each of them the ones slain by Momotaro, each of them with a host to contain the beasts. Zoisite had built the ritual and granted his power to his lover, Kunzite, and part of him knew the importance of maintaining the circle and the binding, but part of him could not resist a smug, satisfied smile at Kunzite's tight ass, and how he would enjoy celebrating with it. Nothing else of the Dark Kingdom's nature had denied them this, for which he was grateful. He knew the rifts it had created with their wives in the old days until they had resolved with each other in turn.

That did not matter.

The un-words and the sounds of the awakening of demon-spirits of old did. Seven souls, the eldest of the humans gathered the grandfather of the Hino line, he the one meant to contain the chieftain. Their souls would slumber within the Oni's presence, and binding them into the flesh of mortal hosts was meant to restrain the Oni and their avarice. Summoned into flesh of their own the Seven might seek to strive against the Dark Kingdom and absent Metallia's direct presence....overwhelm them. Oni were not in truth scions of Chaos, their nature was indeterminate.

And even if Beryl had slain whatever it was that broke the Youma and one of the Neo-Shitennou she had intended to govern her domains, it had taken a sharp toll on her to do so.

The bodies that had been silent in a quasi-coma arched upward, as vast and hulking things formed over them. Two were green, the rest evenly split between red and blue. All of them were beings with great fangs and seeming clad in tiger pelts. Mouths opened and the spirits seemed to slip into them, and then in a grisly process bones cracked and bodies transformed, raising themselves into towering entities three times the size of a man and twice as wide abroad. The biggest of the lot, the grandfather of Hino Rei once, looked down at them.

_**Why have you awakened us?** _

The voice was low and rumbling, tectonic in its effects.

"Find the Senshi, and kill them all."

**_So be it. Then, summoner, we shall have words for and about you......_ **

With that the Oni began to move, flowing into shadows, slipping with a fluid grace that left Kunzite and Zoisite concerned. Just what precisely had they awakened? They held hands and looked at each other uncertainly. Events were moving quickly.

HIKAWA SHRINE:

"My grandfather's missing."

Hino's words were the start of the meeting.

V inclined her head. "I know. The other six abducted were girls. He is the only man added to the bunch."

"What does that mean?"

"It means our enemies are accelerating their plans. For the last year, I have been fighting the weight of something called the Dark Kingdom. What it is a Kingdom of, I do not know. Where it is based....I also do not know. I've broken its operations in the rest of the world. Japan....that alone remains unbroken and wherever the base is."

"Dark Kingdom," mused Jupiter.

"It sounds like something of a fantasy manga."

"It's real. Those monsters you've fought? They're called Youma, they're the most basic footsoldiers of that realm."

They nodded.

"Seven people, six girls, one of them Osaka Naru, and the only man a Miko."

"Mizuno thinks it's connected to the old fairy tale."

"What tale?"

"Momotaro. The boy from the peach who slew Seven Oni. Each of the abductions is a place associated with where one of the seven fell in old Edo."

They nodded again, as Mizuno pointed to them. 

"They have moved quickly, I think that means we shall have to face.....all of them...soon. Very soon, even."

The Senshi looked at each other with a lack of certainty.

They continued to talk for hours, planning and strategizing. By instinct, V let the miko decide what must be done, given that Oni were the most dreadful of Kami and that a miko, of all people, would be best suited to deal with them. Twilight stalked the day when the shadows outside the shrine deepened unnaturally and a pulse of energy unlike any the Senshi, all de-transformed and sometimes surprised to see each other's civilian identities, had felt made its presence known to them. It was not the one that seemed to recur around the school-to-be, either. It was powerful, seemingly in the world but not of it, a force divine in its nature, yet wrathful and malignant.

The Senshi looked to each other and grabbed their Henshins and collectively transformed, stepping out from the shrine to face the things that awaited them.

Seven things three times the size of a man stood before them. All were roughly humanoid, clad in loincloths of tiger pelt. Their hair was as a flowing liquid darkness and each was armed with a great club that gleamed with sickly demonic light. All shared similar cat-like faces with monstrous fangs that extended outward in a downward-facing V. Their feet were clawed with wicked edges.

In a flash of light Tuxedo Kamen arrived with them, Moon's broad smile to see him matched by Tux's own softer smile in turn.

**_Senshi......_ **

The biggest of the lot, the blood-hued thing that was also wielding the most refined-looking club, spoke with that guttural demonic growl.

_**Senshi.....now you die. All fucking lot of you. You're a bunch of shits we've been hired to slay. Can't promise we'll make it fucking quick, either. It's been centuries since we've had the chances for our fun. You were not the ones that bound us, but.....** _

Their eyes traversed them all, even Tuxedo Kamen.

**_You'll all do. Yes....even you, boy in the penguin suit._ **

"Not if we have anything to say about it! In the name of the Moon, we will punish you!"

The Oni laughed and moved in perfect unity, and their speed was awesome, as was their strength. The Senshi braced themselves for a battle against monsters quite literally out of legends and myth.


	21. Seven Oni and the Castle of the Dead:

The HIKAWA SHRINE:

As the battle began, it was Sailor Mercury who formed a vast and thick fog-bank, magic powerful enough to conceal the Senshi from even the Onis' sight while the pulses of each other's energy permitted them keen sight in turn. Each of the Seven Oni was a gigantic and chaotic maelstrom of raw power and ruin, a giant wielding a club, at the most moderate, or a colossus wielding a thing that was a club only by analogy, the masters of the chaos-entities. They knew the Senshi were there, all of them. Mercury, Venus, Moon, Mars, and Jupiter. And the kid in the penguin suit.

As they looked around, a massive bolt of lightning struck the smallest and weakest of them, followed by two more and then a _Venus Love Me Chain!_ And in a flash of light and thunder and power the weakest of the Oni fell, and in their ambush, Zoisite and Kunzite started when the host began to breathe again. The other Oni snarled and used their sounds and voices to try to find each other when fire lanced through the fog and a _Moon healing Escalation!_ which echoed in turn with the sheer raw power of the Senshi of the Moon. The Oni struck this time was the leader of them all, and where the other had fallen to Jupiter and Venus, this one simply had great blackened areas that oozed an oil-like ichor akin to blood and howled:

**Fuck all of you! I shall tear your limbs from your body and shit in your skulls!**

Another of the Oni was ringed by Mercury, even as Moon and Mars kept the leader distracted, the Senshi carefully using Mercury's fog and their own speed to make it seem like they were speaking more distantly than they were. The second-weakest of the Oni broke the ranks, charging in wrath to avenge the honor of its leader. Lighting arced through the fog, and in a first case of what would become a more deadly and standard Senshi combination, Jupiter's lightning echoed through the fog, charging it with an immensity of power that left the Senshi unaffected, cast the Second Oni back into slumber as its host, Naru, resumed breathing rather than her trance, reappearing in Zoisite and Kunzite's chamber.

The Senshi were unaffected but the Oni howled, the survivors falling to their knees, blackened flesh and oil-hued thick blood falling from their veins. Again Jupiter's lightning charged the fog while the Senshi moved to strike the leader in a combined attack, switching up the approach on Mercury's suggestion, coming to trust the genius and to see how grimly effective her strategies were. The leader was too powerful to fall to the attack, but it left it reliant on its club to keep itself upright. The Senshi were to be surprised when they felt three more presences, Senshi akin to themselves but unimaginably more powerful appearing in the fog.

The Oni to its left sought to lunge for one of the unknown, just arrived Senshi and by focusing its own presence to seek their energy, managed to grab Jupiter.

She smiled.

"Sorry to disappoint you, but I'm stronger than I look" and then lightning surged from her hands and the Oni dropped her, its forearms smoking and Jupiter leaping up into the fog, as thunderclouds intensified over the fogbank. Weather analysts would seek to explain the appearance of the equivalent clouds of a Category 5 Typhoon and lightning that was detectable but not quite lightning at all, and how such strange weather was beginning to appear over Tokyo on cloudless days without rhyme or reason. As the other Senshi looked to each other and nodded, they began to combine attacks with Jupiter's lightning serving to focus things from above, while Mars's flame burned with a deadly heat and the Love Me Chains brought down more of the Oni.

They felt the power of the unknown Senshi at work, and it was awe-inspiring. Time itself seemed to bend and warp before one of them. The shouts of _World Shaking_ brought the very ground to tremble and the winds to howl with glee at the sight of the power of their master. _Deep Submerge_! brought a different kind of water into the fog, the briny deep and the immense power and majesty of the ocean, and where it struck the Oni were overwhelmed and their hosts reawoke. The one that was silent and marked only by dimly seen glimpses of a glaive that ensured that Oni not truly disabled were. It was the first time that all the Senshi fought together, even if the Outers were only glimpsed by the presence of their energy and their attacks.

From seven, there were now three.

The three most powerful, the leader battered and bleeding and barely able to stay upright, one of them with a leg blown off beneath the hip. the other just fast enough to evade attacks and doing its level best to, and even then with great blackened charred spots coating a significant portion of its body and an eye gummed up. The three Oni were together, the leader focusing on its raw power to heal itself just enough that it could wield its club.

**Cowards! You strike from fog and hurl the lighting like a mockery of Susano-o! You are nothing! Nothing at all!**

The leader's bellowing rants sought to goad the Senshi into striking.....and yet all that happened was more of the lightning, and fire, the wind and the sea, Time itself, Death and rebirth, and the chain and then the Moon Healing Escalation and there were two.

 **I am sorry, my lord. Our time of freedom was too brief,** murmured the one with the destroyed leg, as its essence was banished and dissipated.

The leader snarled and summoned more power into itself, the only one of the Oni that sought to do so. Fully healed, it saw to a grim amusement that the fog had parted. Eight women faced it, the Senshi of the Moon with her meatball-headed hairstyle just next to Sailor V. Each of the Senshi was unimaginably powerful and awe-inspiringly so, and yet.....it was the Moon Senshi, with Tuxedo Kamen at her side that stepped forward, and raised her Tiara. It sparked with a brilliant and warm energy that made the Oni tremble slightly, and each of the Senshis' tiaras glowed, energy seeming to flow into the Moon Senshi, a thing that the Oni saw was unconscious. Not aiming to just stand around and let itself die it roared and lunged forward with its club gleaming with energy only for the Moon Senshi to hurl her tiara forward, even as its club struck Tuxedo Kamen a glancing blow that hurled him upward and then collided into a startled Uranus, knocking her to her knees. The tiara struck the Oni, and its fanged face made a gasp of shock and pain as it fell before the Senshi.

I......I understand now, it said, as it looked at the Moon Senshi and grasped the enormous power within her. As it faded, it spoke words indecipherable to any save itself, and the mocking sound of laughter echoed likewise.

Standing victorious, the Inners and the Outers met for the first time. They did so with Sailor Moon running to Tuxedo Kamen, and Neptune to Uranus. Quietly, her glave at her side, Saturn strode to Uranus first, and focused healing power that let Uranus awaken, her shattered skull brought back together as she looked at the youngest of the Senshi in true wonder, and then to Tuxedo Kamen, whom she likewise awoke from the shattered rib and legbones, the bones going back into the skin.

Moon looked at them. "Who.....who are you?"

Uranus, healed and exulting for a moment in her returned strength turned to her, and spoke as she assumed for the first time the role that would become hers in the deeper future to come:

"We are the Outer Senshi, princess. The guardians of the borders, defenders against all threats Youma and alien."

Moon blinked.

"Oh."

As they looked at each other, the castle of the old, dead Kingdom of the Moon began to spark back to life, the power that had called down the Oni and its growing strength calling to its own. The two Mau looked at each other and then told the Senshi "Brace yourselves"....as only Pluto did so properly, all too familiar with what this would involve.

The Senshi found themselves called up to the vast palace that they had seen from their dreams. The outer courtyards were filled with bleached bones that sparked with magic, traces of a last battle and a day of doom. The palace was colossal, a thing meant to rule nine planets with a full bureaucracy, and in its full dimensions, awoken by the return of those reborn, telescopes observing the moon were awed when a full third of its territory transformed into the vast thing mentioned by the Lunar expeditions in the knowledge known to the most secret intelligence agencies of the world.

The Senshi walked the halls, uncertain why they were summoned, flashes of old memories coming ever more intensely, leading even the powerful Outers to cluster together with the Inners, each of them acting less like immortal superheroes and more like the frightened young women they were. The palace was dead and yet immensely beautiful, a magical power inherent to it giving it a softer and genteel light. It might have been minutes with Senshi speed or hours, but, making a point to avoid the corpses, they strolled through the halls, looking at the ruin of the old Palace. Tears flowed down the cheeks of Sailor Moon and the Outers, and at points with the Inners.

By instinct and the resonance of the power that lurked there, they found themselves drawn to the center of the palace where a great throneroom marked with the truer power of all that awaited them lurked. As they all strode into it, a figure seemed to materialize into existence. Both hologram and a record of the soul of Queen Serenity, all of the Senshi looked very closely at Sailor Moon, then found themselves kneeling before her instinctively.

"Hello, my daughter," said Queen Serenity, looking at Sailor Moon.

Sailor Moon was now unreservedly crying, tears of sorrow and joy and a thousand other emotions interwoven into her. Tuxedo Kamen gently placed his hand on her shoulder.

The ghost of Queen Serenity turned her gaze to him as well. "Hello, Prince Endymion. You did find her, in the end."

With that, she waved her hand and a great circular disk-like thing arose in the heart of the old audience chamber.

"My Senshi, my daughter, Prince, you are owed much in the way of explanation. I apologize that what you see will shake you, but it must be seen all the same. I........I must tell you how it is that you came to be here, and how a Kingdom fell."

______________

ZOISITE AND KUNZITE'S BASE:

"We failed, my love."

"Yes," trembled Kunzite, holding Zoisite.

"It's not fair, we were only reborn a few years ago and I just...." they held hands, as their eyes looked into each other's.

"I don't want to lose you."

They heard a sound and felt a presence soaked in blood and fire and immensity of power, swelling to its full splendor, and they held each other.

"When we're reborn, Zoi-koi, I shall find you. I promise. Nothing can stop this."

What strode toward them was clad in armor, a sword in its hand, but their eyes narrowed when they saw the difference. It was not the Mikaboshi that talking in the midst of summoning the Oni led them to believe had slain the rest. It was vaguely akin to a man with very dark skin, long hair akin to the old imagery of a barbarian. His gauntlets were clawed, and the golden armor was stunningly, superlatively ornate. But the eyes.....the eyes glowed with a golden sheen that was like suns set into the ageless face.

_**I did warn you, all of you, so long ago. You dismissed the warnings as that of a raving madman, merely the soldier aching for a war. It was not the case.** _

The power in that voice froze them.

"Do we know you?"

Kunzite stood protectively in front of Zoisite.

_**You do. I had hoped to draw out the Mikaboshi and to slay it, ending its threat before it could take the other path but I suspect it must have sensed me. Since I cannot find the greater quarry, the two of you will be given what mercy I can give.** _

The sword blazed into a brilliant psychic flame that hypnotized them, the flame burning like a sun yet not truly giving off any heat.

_**And I won't ask one of you to suffer while the other....** _

The sword lanced out and in two swift motions Zoisite and Kunzite fell, the soul-flames burning through and leaving their souls, too, to go to the discs that held the souls of the Shitennou.

 _ **Such a shame.**_ The towering figure shook his head.

Alivia revealed herself then, springing down from the sniper's nest.

"No such luck, I'm afraid. The creature we were chasing either escaped the snare or it was never here."

They looked at the unconscious individuals left around them.

"So what do we do with all of them?"

The golden-armored figure knelt beside all seven of them and his power pulsed out, healing minds, working to repair what effects the Oni had had on their hosts. When each of them would awaken all of this would seem to be but a very vivid and terrifyingly real dream of facing superhumans who called the lightning, soul-fires, the power of Love, and the slowly reviving strength of the princess of the Moon.

He raised his right gauntlet, and began to cast a set of powerful runes over each.

**_We send them home, leaving them none the wiser._ **

\--------

D POINT: 

The DD Girls were satisfied with the first sets of the traps that awaited them. Queen Beryl in turn looked from her great throne, hearing the voices of Metallia and the Mikaboshi speaking. The Mikaboshi goaded her into the great battle, and yet it was Metallia who spoke with eagerness still the greater. No word from Zoisite or Kunzite, bar the appearance and disappearance of a massive set of thunderclouds over part of Tokyo akin to those of a category-five Typhoon that had vanished in a brilliant flash of light. Beryl could not hide a sense of unease about this confrontation.

She remembered the towering golden giant and his warnings to her, and their confrontation when he had nearly slain her only for Metallia herself to threaten the woman with him and to nearly burn her body and soul alike. Somehow, in some way, she had driven him off with that. The warnings echoed and never more firmly than when she remained near her orb, seeing the aftermath of the battle. Somehow, in some way, something of Queen Serenity had survived and casually taken all of the Senshi who had banished the Seven Oni. That made her fearful, at one level, and intent to eradicate her foes the moreso. 

The Mikaboshi had stepped out, claiming it wished to find something out about the alien she'd encountered. The look of gloating in its eyes, the satisfaction.....that made Beryl most uncertain of all about the wisdom of what was impending, but now, at this point......she was in the midst of the mess created by all that been set in motion so long ago. And there was but one thing left to do. To fight, to prevail, and when the Senshi had fallen, to reclaim her Endymion and to leave the Moon Princess aware that history always repeated itself....and Chaos in the end would dance on the grave of all life that would be forever caught up in the cycle of excess-decay-change-blood and skulls.

Those last thoughts caused her orb to flash kaleidoscopic energy again and she saw the four realms within the greater power of what lurked therein, and stared hypnotized. War was coming, a war of Chaos and Light.

The air around her became more chilled than the normal for the Arctic Circle and a strange wind began to blow as the second sets began to be built. She almost swore she heard a voice on the wind saying:

**_The only name you'll hear._ **

**_End and the Death._ **


	22. Voices in the Castle of the Dead:

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Senshi learn the truth, Usagi Tsukino learns who she truly is, and the Mikaboshi investigates the strange encounter Queen Beryl reported.

THE PALACE OF THE MOON:

The Senshi were to stare hypnotized as Queen Serenity told them the tale, and as they did not merely hear it but seemed to see it drawn into all else:

THE SILVER MILLENNIUM, THE LAST DAY:

_"Princess," Serenity turned as she saw the most powerful of her quartet of Guardians._

_"Jupiter," she said with a sweet smile._

_"The Prince of Terra has arrived." Jupiter's voice was a blend of warmth and coldness. Relations between the Earth and the Moon were in a point of hostility well before the rumors of the growing power of the Great Enemy had overtaken it began to show some elements of fact. Only a few individuals had escaped it, a few in elaborate ornate starships that seemed of no human make and more like bone grown and woven into shapes. And two in a smaller golden shuttlecraft that was massively armored and armed, a thing that hinted at a terrible future Queen Serenity had devoted her effort to denying._

_Yet when she saw Princess Serenity clasping her hands together and squealing she couldn't resist happiness on her behalf. It had been long ago that the Four Guardians and the Four Heavenly Kings had shared their interwoven blend of relationships, with Zoisite and Kunzite together, and merrily so. Mars and Venus likewise, and her and Mercury. Love was a many-faceted thing and the ties between each other helped to make the periods of loneliness that had grown the greater change. Yet something had distinctly changed with Kunzite that had created a painful rift there. He had started to display a cruel streak and when the presence of the Great Enemy made itself the more directly revealed....something had died in Venus of the girl she had once been, then._

_The ballroom was there, all the people of the Silver Millennium's elite, all charged with magic, the women possessing superlative power but the men no less so in their own ways, if less prone to the more overtly destructive power that reached its apex in the Senshi. Darkness pulsed from the Earth and other corners, mad laughter and gibbering seeming to stalk the shadows. It was the last ball, and the crowds that danced did so with a desperation and a fervor matched further by Serenity, who kept searching the crowds for Endymion. Then a sudden frost rimed the room, and breaths began to mist the air._

_Samus. That's the only name you'll hear. Samus. It is the end and the death. Samus. Samus is the man before you, Samus is the man beside you. I am Samus._

_It was Jupiter who turned to see the high general of Uranus's armies standing suddenly away from others, his eyes starting to spark with a crimson light and a rumbling wet echo booming from his voice:_

_Look out, Samus is here._

_Jupiter summoned her transformation and began to float in the air, as portals opened at the edge of the ballroom. The other Senshi transformed, Venus ordering Mars to keep the Princess safe._

_It was then that one more portal opened, enhanced by the power of the Golden Crystal._

_"Serenity!"_

_She looked, "Endymion!"_

_As they began to move toward each other, one last portal opened, the great armies of Chaos that stepped through the others ringing the room. A tiny portion of the deeper strength at its beck and call, the armies of the Lost and the Damned thronged the room, headed by a tall woman with red hair and a dark blue dress. Beryl looked out._

_"Queen Serenity, we have come for you. Kneel before me, and I will spare your life and that of your daughter. I could always use a bed-warmer for when Endymion is not entertaining me."_

_Her glare was matched by the cruelty of her expression._

_"And my dog could probably use a mate, too."_

_Cries of anger from the loyalists were followed by the soldiers and guards quietly ensuring, thanks to Queen Serenity's spell, that the crowd were all armed. They had the Queen, Princess, and all the Senshi. A great battle and Chaos would fall and the gutter-insults aimed at the Queen and the Princess be avenged._

_Each of the Heavenly Kings stepped forward empowered by Chaos. Their swords lanced out and seemed to kill in a more corrosive sense, almost drinking the blood of their victims, who fell in corpse-pallor, as the blades gleamed ever more brilliantly with a crimson soul-fire in each of their hands._

_Queen Serenity raised her crystal and her power began to surge out. The Lost and the Damned could not hold against the power of the Crystal and the love and healing and goodness within it, and they crumbled into ash as though they had never been. Yet it was not truly Beryl who directed power against her foes, even as the Anathema fought without as Queen Serenity within the palace. Armies fell where the Anathema's golden flame burned, their souls and that which was animating them enfeebled by its presence. Its companion and lover fought with an equal ferocity of her own, her empathy against the products of the most negative emotions giving her a less spectacular and far smaller scale equivalent of the power of the Crystal._

_The Shitennou empowered by blades that drank the life-force of others stepped forward into combat, each with the Senshi that they loved. Such was the power of Chaos and its ascendancy that the Moon Kingdom, a thousand years removed from the last true strife with it, found that the statements based on myths a thousand years older, did not quite cover the truth. The Senshi were at their fullest might but theirs was the power of their crystals and souls working in unity. The Shitennou drank the power of the souls of dozen, and between this and the despair at seeing the end of all things in their eyes, even the banishment of the daemons and Youma that had come with the hordes of Lost and Damned did not mean as much as it could._

_Indeed, their despair and hopelessness seemed to make Chaos stronger, even as Endymion managed to reach Serenity in time for Beryl, who had followed them, to confront them._

_"Princess," her voice was cold and charged with the monstrous power that flowed through her._

_"Traitor," hissed Endymion._

_"In time, darling, you shall come to love me and what I can and I will offer you."_

_"Never. I never loved you, and you have sold your soul to something beyond description in its horrors."_   
  
_"Chaos? It empowers me, it makes me a Queen worthy of matching Serenity. The false queen on the Lunar Throne has tried to stop me from getting here, but now...."_

_She was too slow to grasp that Endymion removing his sword and standing in front of the woman he loved meant what it did until he suddenly called on the power of the Golden Crystal that surged into the blade and permitted him to bring it down, hurling her back with a blast that threw her against the wall. And at that point, even as Venus slew Kunzite with an agonized scream, she fell with the soul blade in her body burning and causing her to fall, blood oozing from her mouth. Mars in turn screamed in rage and fury, only for her body to feel the agony of the Soul-blade, even as her fires burned her opponent to ashes. Mars painfully crawled to Venus, both reaching out for each other with all their remaining strength. Stillness took them when their fingers touched._

_Mercury in turn fell when her opponent drew her into an overbalanced motion, leaving her exposed, seemingly, only for the soul-blade to impale her through the heart when her own ice surged out into a set of six powerful icicles that took out the third of the Heavenly Kings, as Jupiter made an agonized cry of "NO!" and her rage surged out, her lightning shattering the soul-blade of her opponent, and then causing him to fall as the lightning surged outward. Beryl in turn snarled and the power of Chaos within her erupted out in a terrible antisound that echoed with a rumbling psionic power, striking Jupiter, before Beryl summoned the soul-fires that lurked within the death of the Shitennou and made them into a blade, throwing it into Jupiter's back, watching her slowly bleed out and trying to reach Ami._

_Mercury's eyes were fading but her smile no less real as she caressed Jupiter's face and they spoke, simultaneously to her at one last time "I lo-"_

_Beryl turned to look to Serenity, just behind Endymion. Her smile was still colder as she summoned the immensity of power within her, and Endymion raised his sword again._

_"She corrupted you, my love," Beryl's voice rumbled with the unnatural power that echoed through it._

_"And I am going to save you!" With that Beryl unleashed a powerful blast of energy that impaled Princess Serenity, who stood in a startled fashion, not knowing what direction to fall. Endymion shouted "NO!" and then hurled his blade toward Beryl, who seeing this unleashed the fullness of the power of Metallia, seeming to become a towering giant of lava and fire._

_Your kingdom is mine, Serenity. You thought you could contain me, contain Chaos itself, with love._

_The Outer Senshi teleported into the palace behind her, and she sensed the awe-inspiring power of all four of them, turning._

_Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto. Behold the ruination of all that is, of everything you fought for. The other Senshi are dead. Your princess is dying, and the prince of Earth?_

_Metallia unleashed a single blast of cosmic flame empowered by the corrupted and ruined version of that derived from the realm around the Yggdrassil that spawned her. Endymion fell, a skeleton with a few charred bits of clothing, bones bleached white by the sheer heat._

_Dead. Now there are five of you left. I will make this slow and agonizing, and I will enjo-_

_SILVER MOON CRYSTAL ETERNITY POWER!_

_The blast that struck Metallia did so with a power that made the Jotunn fall to her knees._

_How? How is it that a mere mortal empowered with this accursed magic can do this? I am a high queen of Muspelheim, ours the shards that go into the stars that empower you!_

_"You are a thing fallen to decay and weakness believing yourself strong. A shame and a disgrace to the deeper legends and to all your race."_

_As Metallia crumbled into ashes and Beryl's body with her, the Jotunn snarled and formed a shard of molten magma and hurled it at the Queen. It struck her in the thigh, causing her to stumble._

_Her gaze looked to the Outer Senshi._

_"You know what you must do."_

_And as they turned to do it, only the Outers saw what happened next, a look of sorrow and shame crossing their eyes and the haunting failure of having arrived too late and listened to their foe rather than simply striking her down._ Saturn looked at it the most calmly, and of them it was Uranus who looked at her with the greatest sense of shame and of failure, and then at all of them.

The story ended, Queen Serenity looked at them all.

"It was Metallia in the end who destroyed our kingdom, not Beryl. She deceived her, she offered her power and domination as a way to get one she loved. Chaos cannot offer love, only the power of the Crystals can."

The Senshi looked on, most of them traumatized.

"You have made me proud, my daughter. And I find it amusing that you were born 'The rabbit of the moon' " The other Senshi turned to her and gazed in wonder. 

"And you, Endymion, who overcame the loss of your parents and as Chiba Mamoru have shown all the courage and strength that goes into....all of this."

Sailor Moon whirled to Tuxedo Kamen. There was no way, there was no possible way......and yet it was.

"All of you, my Senshi, found each other. And yet as the light is reborn, so is the darkness."

A three-dimensional hologram of the Earth formed, and a pulsing center of darkness lurked in the Arctic Circle. A second area that gleamed with what the later Senshi would have recognized as 'Extraterrestrial' menace gleamed in the area that would become Mugen Gakken. Overwhelmed with the power and the surge of memories and all that went into them, the Senshi chose to focus on the illumination of D-Point.

"Here. The Great Enemy's servant is here, in the land of the midnight Sun, where Metallia can subsist on the energies therein."

"So we go there, and we can take her down and avenge...."

It was Jupiter who spoke, Moon silent still.

"Yes, you can."

Uranus spoke in turn: "Then we'll do it. Everything that happened here must........" She hid her hand in her arm to wipe away the tears that fell as the memory of the horrid fate that had ensnared all the Outer Senshi struck her again, the feeling of....of what it was....

With that, the Senshi nodded, even Moon, who remained pensive. It was impossible that her Tuxedo Kamen, her brave hero, could have been Chiba, but then....her hand joined them. Eight Senshi and their princess, empowered by the discovery and aiming to showcase that the Senshi, together, were up to the scale of whatever they faced, teleported down to the Earth.

PANAMA CANAL ZONE:

The Mikaboshi had tread the battlefield, awed at the scale of destruction used. Chaos was the mightiest force of wrath and ruin in existence, but it was not the only one. There were those beings in other worlds created by dark science and blasphemous magic who could command the power to shatter stars without need of the forces empowering both the Senshi and their enemy. Whatever it was that Beryl had faced here was akin to this. A massive chunk of jungle had been flattened and a great impact crater created, and traces of psychic power of dreadful levels prevailed over......

The Mikaboshi pondered. There was temptation here, a sense of noticing a greater power that lurked in the edges. And there was danger. That which had been here aimed to destroy her and all like her, not as forces of Chaos, exactly, but as something else. Metallia had had to step in for Beryl to win here, and it had not been a clean victory. She would need to swell and to grow her power with age and practice before facing whatever this was. The will of Chaos would out for Beryl and Metallia as she traced the Senshi teleporting from the reappeared castle on the Moon to the Arctic Circle.

Metallia and Beryl had failed, but they both possessed enormous power. Perhaps they would even win, in the end. Chaos always won, after all.

It was not the will of Chaos that the Mikaboshi intervene in what was to happen, so she contented herself deciphering the psychic ghosts of what had happened here.

D-POINT:

The eight Senshi, the Princess, and Tuxedo Kamen arrived at D-Point, where the last traces of defenses had been set up by the DD Girls. Elaborate interlocking barriers of firepower and Chaos magic, against the Inner and Outer Senshi, determined to avenge their deaths.

Within the citadel, by her orb, Queen Beryl decided to wait and to see how many, if any, her girls managed to kill. Whatever was left would be so ruined by the victory that even if the Outers with their greater raw power did make it through, she would finish them, and seek to draw Endymion together with her. The wind echoed with the voice:

**_The End and the Death._ **

She wished that sounded less like a promise to her and more like a threat to them, but she could not shake this, nor the gibbering laughter that followed.

Thunderclouds began to gather and with the unleashing of the power of Jupiter and Uranus, who took the vanguard, the battle began. Darkness laughed and gibbered and thirsted for blood, and the Queen on her throne began to let the power of Chaos sink into her and flow through her. She was going to need it. All of it.


	23. The End of the Beginning:

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Last Stand of the Dark Kingdom begins, and for the first time Sailor Moon and her Senshi grasp that against the Great Enemy, there is only war, and that no war is anything but cruelty that cannot be refined.

D POINT:

The first set of defenses the Dark Kingdom erected were shattered with the combination of gusts of wind and bolts of lightning. Mines erupted with overpowering destructive force, cratering the ground. Gun turrets that had perked up were disrupted in explosive force by the lightning bolts of Sailor Jupiter, and with this, and both Jupiter and Uranus providing a view from above, the Senshi began to tread forward quietly. Each of the defensive lines would have attracted the envy of the vast legions of the Axis-Soviet War, and the breaking of the first portion of the first only made this clear with the next. It was fortunate for the Senshi that Sailor V had disrupted the Dark Kingdom globally or the weapons would have been more than merely conventional.

More wind and lightning followed, and the next phase of the line fell apart, even as Saturn summoned a Silent Wall to shield the team from an activated set of interlocking gun turrets, and Mars's fire and Neptune's oceanic tides smashed them. All of this, and they had managed to carve a narrow line into the first of the defenses. And as they were focused on the kind of immense firepower dredged up from the lost arsenals of the old Chaos-Earth, it was the first of the DD Girls, the red one, that managed to summon its vines, using them to entrap a startled and unprepared Sailor Mercury. The team found itself divided, Saturn and the Outers focusing on shielding and breaking further into the first line while the Inners rushed to help Ami, Venus ordering the princess to stay with the Outers. Not yet prepared to assert any kind of authority over her Senshi, Moon meekly assented. Mamoru for his part tapped instinctively into a kind of energetic boost for all of them, a dim shadow of his future and his own growth in power, amplified by the memories of his past life and deciding, after all this, that he would need to be kinder to Usagi and even perhaps.....

The vines began to spark with lightning and Ami screamed painfully, the smell of charred flesh reaching the air and making the Senshi sick, distracting them just enough for another of the DD girls to sneak around and try to stab Uranus in the back, only for a _World Shaking!_ to hurl her through the snow and past the defensive lines. The smell of the burning flesh intensified, while the DD girl proved exceptionally skilled, calling upon illusions and some of the more overt powers of Chaos to simply hold off the Senshi as the trap did its work. Ami's focus on calling her own power began to ebb and she twitched, motions slowing, and Jupiter, who had gotten the closest to the wires, found herself motivated to a new kind of desperation, trying to use her lightning to disrupt the power of what was within the wires. Instead with a tremendous boom she was hurled into the air, armor smoking, and the dark energy continued to scythe into Ami, who transformed from Sailor Mercury to Mizuno Ami, flesh horribly burned, and that only led to the energy intensifying further as the other Senshi's efforts to short-circuit it from a more indirect fashion lest they be hurled into the air like Jupiter, proved unavailing.

Jupiter descended and found herself near Mizuno, whose last sight was that of Jupiter trying to move toward her, and with a sad smile and a soft sigh, Mizuno Ami died for the first, but not the last, time in the service of her princess.

Jupiter's howl of sorrow sounded truly Jovian and the wrath that flared through her caused her hair to stand on end. She unleashed the full power of the thunderstorm that was within her in a set of frenzied bolts, lancing through the defense fields and managing to cause every single minefield in the four lines to explode at once, a tremendous eruption of fire and fury to match her grief and anger. In all of this, she was incautious, incautious enough that the second of the DD Girls took a blade, one of the old Soul-harvesters wielded by the old Shitennou, the one wielded by the former Nephrite, in point of fact, to slam straight through Jupiter. It did so in a single leap and at that, in the midst of the fire and smoke created by the disrupted minefields, Jupiter fell headlong from the skies only for an enraged Uranus to unleash her own attack and disintegrating the DD Girl, before swooping down to try to catch Jupiter.

She was not cautious enough in how she did so, and screamed in pain as her hand was impaled clean through by the blade, feeling its energetic and blood draining at work.

It was a haggard and pale Uranus and Jupiter that fell from the sky with a sickening crunch.

For her part, every instinct in Neptune said to run to Uranus, but every Senshi power told her that the horrid feeling she felt, the sickly aching loneliness, the ripped open gaping hole in her meant what it meant. At multiple levels. A tear ran down her face. Too late to change any of this. So much for the promise of what they were, and of who they were. All her visions fallen in the snow, Uranus and Jupiter sprawled like broken dolls, with at least the horrid blade equally shattered on an impact that left a crater much larger from the impact than their bodies could or should have produced.

Two less, the Senshi moved forward. The looks on their face were numb, they had fought monsters, they had taken down the literal Oni out of a legend that it had taken a son of the Gods themselves to destroy, and the Dark Kingdom's machines had done.....

Neptune's grief gave itself to its own vent and she called into herself a fuller power of the Ocean, and the Senshi gasped at the feeling. It seemed like the waves drawing far back from the shore, and on her throne Beryl moved from the satisfied smile of the removal at one stroke of the two most offensively-geared Senshi by their own compassion become folly to a moment of genuine and unalloyed fear. What was drawn from the shore collided into it and the defensive positions erected in front of the palace shattered in a single overpowering blow, a brief glimpse to the grieving Neptune of the kind of power that would be hers in the future. A victory as hollow as Haruka's own bloodless body behind her.

With a wistful look and frozen tears on her face, she looked back before joining the team as they trudged across the snow. One of the Youma, at least, had been destroyed. How many more waited for them.....

Two more sought to ambush them as they approached the palace. Venus and Mars shielded the princess directly and Michiru did a very Haruka-like thing in hurling herself forward at her foe, unleashing blasts of destructive power that the Youma dodged at first, then again, then one that ripped off one of its arms and legs with the third when it made impact. Growling, Michiru strode forward, an oceanic briny smell pervading the crisp ice of the north. The DD Girl looked at her, but it was not afraid. A cold grin marked her face, then the purple DD Girl hurled the second of the four Soul-harvester blades at a Michiru who welcomed its thrust, deeming a world without Haruka not worth saving......and yet for all that a cold-hearted soldier whose last Deep Submerge took herself and the second of the DD Girls out with her in a tremendous blast of energy that left the Youma vaporized and Michiru slumped on her knees, the blade frozen in her body to an icy level more powerful than imagined.

Hotaru's gaze was broken at the sight of two more of her parents dead, and the Senshi, who had been eight, now reduced to five. Plus the Princess and the former Prince of the Earth.

They were five, and the DD Girls were three.

The Red and the Green called into themselves power and created illusions. Mars saw her grandfather, staggering and weak, moaning that the Oni had done a number on him, asking why he was in the Arctic.

She gritted her teeth. "It's a trick. It has to be a trick." Calling into herself the fire that was hers, she turned to see the other DD Girl moving to Usagi in the form of her mother, the princess stunned to see her and unable to stop herself going forward. Gritting her teeth again, Mars literally jumped up into the air and called to herself her power, grieving for her fellow Senshi, for her grandfather, for everything that had happened. She landed straight on 'Tsukino Ikuko' who revealed herself to be the Red DD Girl, who snarled and sought to wield the third soul-harvester against Mars. Mars's fire went up against that of the Dark Kingdom, and for a time it was an even struggle.

Then she heard it:

**The only name you'll hear.**

The distraction was momentary but it gave the DD Girl enough strength to shove Mars off of her, and Mars was startled enough that the DD Girl took the blade and slammed the flat of it against her face, making her jerk back and blood jerk from her as the DD Girl lanced the tip across Mars's throat, enjoying her muffled sounds and the sight of her falling to the ground, only to be struck by the combined powers of Venus, Neptune, and Saturn and utterly obliterated. The sword fell to the ground, the blade managing to pierce the snow and dig into the soil, and a Deadly Scream! launched at it obliterated it and the hateful power within it.

The ghostly voice that echoed with its murmur that was so hatefully familiar to the Outers became a low thrumming background noise ignored. Now four Senshi, the Princess, Tuxedo Kamen, and two DD Girls.

Reaching Beryl's base, they stepped in only to face the sense of total, all-consuming smothering darkness. The malevolent presence of Metallia, never fully sealed or requiring energy in the sense that Beryl believed was the case pervaded the place, and the DD Girls left were able to feed from it, from her, and to mark their presence by still powerful things motivating them. One had the last of the Soul-harvesters, the other direct dark energy of Chaos itself. The palace moaned and howled with antiwords. One of the elements of the moans was the old and hateful: 

**Samus. The only name you'll hear. Samus. The end and the death. Samus. Samus is the man before you, Samus is the man beside you. Look out, Samus is here!**

Others various gibbering laughs and snarls, and the thunderous pair of twin voices that intoned:

**Mine the hands that kill, mine the hands that set the stars to burn. Mine the undying flame that burns in hatred, mine the sacred dreams become nightmares most horrid.**

As the Senshi strode in, the illusions struck out in a terrible fog that absent Mizuno's wisdom and the fires of Mars became horribly vivid. _Pluto saw the rotting corpses of Uranus and Neptune rising from the grave and shambling toward her with skeletal jaws whispering You killed us...._

_Saturn saw her father not choked to death in the callous grip of an armored giant but alive and well, eyes glowing with a terrible fire and her body mutated and warped and 'enhanced' by mechanical limbs that were not hers but saturated with the power of the Great Enemy. Two terrible glowing eyes and a sense of a malevolent Presence lurking without in something horrid._

_Venus saw the blade that cut Mars's throat again and again, unable to break it or to fully accept that she'd lost not one but both of the people she loved for all time._

_Tuxedo Kamen saw a little girl with pink odangoes withering into nothing and the shocked eyes of Usagi in an airport, a glimpse of a golden sword protruding from his breast and a cold mocking laughter._

_Usagi saw the rotting corpse of Mamoru in his tuxedo, flesh still visible on part of his body, ridden by maggots and smelling the horrid stench of the grave._

It was not Pluto, mistress of Time, but Usagi herself who took her henshin and focused on the memory of the kind of power she'd seen her mother wield. In her hands suddenly her broach changed and on her throne, Beryl's eyes went wide with fear and the gloating voice of Metallia laughed. The power she craved returned to face her, and to meet its demise. Light began to glow from Sailor Moon, but not in time enough to stop the frozen and horrified Senshi paralyzed by their visions from being impaled by the Sword, in one case, the leader of the DD Girls smiling at her as she lifted Pluto up on her sword and then let her drop from the blade marked with her blood, then Venus who took a blast from Chaos to protect her but called upon her power sufficient enough that it disintegrated both of the last of the DD Girls, falling to her knees with a smile.

Holding the Silver Crystal in her hands, feeling her body animated by a vast power that she only barely glimpsed, Usagi stood in the blood and corpse-haunted place where her Senshi had died, died to protect her, and tears fell from her eyes. They had died to save her......

Taking Tuxedo Kamen's wrist, they moved into the palace, her light causing elements of it to brighten and then seem to crumble into dust, snow blowing on the winds leavened with the smell of charred flesh and the odd kind of decay in the bodies of Senshi.

It was not a long walk to the room with the Orb, and there.....

"Beryl." Usagi's voice was oddly calm, more that of the old Serenity than Usagi herself. She had withdrawn into Serenity, slightly, to do this without falling into a sense of overwhelming grief that girls she had barely known, and some she had just met on that battlefield had all died for her without regret.

The entity that was and wasn't Beryl on the throne looked at her, her eyes become glowing pools of fire. It was Beryl's body and somewhat her voice, but the low and echoing thunder of Metallia's voice that spoke from her:

_**Princess, and the man who is mine. Welcome to the heart of my power. There were ten of you. Now there is my destiny and my ascension.** _

With that Beryl stood up and descended from the throne, her tread immensely heavier than what so curvy a body so lightly clad should have produced. The glow in her eyes did not match her motions, her body seeming to move around it rather than the reverse.

_**Come to me, Endymion my love. You chose the wrong one in that time long ago, but I can forgive you the mistakes of youth.** _

Tuxedo Kamen looked at her and part of him felt the enchantments trying to draw him, but he shook his head.

"Good people died to stop you, monster. I won't dishonor their sacrifice."

**_Perhaps not in my case but you will fall to the ranks of the foe, in the end. It is your destiny. Once the hero.......then the man in distress. I offer you a more dignified path._ **

"No."

Beryl's eyes wept a single tear of fire that left a smell on her cheek not that different than that from Mizuno's body.

**_So be it, then._ **

With that Beryl's hair began to expand and move in a way that made it clear just how dreadfully powerful she was. And it lanced out not for Usagi herself, but for Tuxedo Kamen.


	24. She shall slay Leviathan the twisting serpent, Leviathan the piercing serpent:

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Dark Kingdom Arc ends with a bang, and Princess Serenity discovers nothing so melancholy as a battle won save a battle lost.

D POINT:

Her hair grasped Mamoru in a bone-crunching grip, holding him up by his limbs.

_**Let him go to me, Serenity, remove your curse. Or his death shall be on your hands as all those of the Senshi now and in the fall of the Moon Kingdom were. It is your fate, in the end. Forever the mightiest of all of them, forever doomed to watch the people you love die for your hubris in challenging the might of Metallia!** _

"He is not mine, we aren't even dating."

_**You enchanted him, creature! Release him!** _

"Even if I could release what did not exist, I would not let him go to you, and to what you are, and what you have become."

_**On your head be it.** _

Her hair _pulled_ and Usagi Tsukino appeared because Serenity's mask was stricken by grief as the metallic smell of blood and the more horrid smell of entrails joined, the severed portions of Mamoru's body falling with a sickening squelching sound.

_**Now there's just you and me, no mother to protect you.** _

_**No Senshi, faithful loyal whipped dogs that they are, to shield you.** _

Beryl strode toward Usagi, blood dripping from her hair, eyes glowing with that terrible fire. The Silver Crystal's power flowed through Sailor Moon and in it she found herself plunged into a fundamental truth of the universe, plunged into it to a point that her body seemed to glow and change, and for a moment her Senshi fuku was replaced by a new version of her old ballgown.

"You have nothing, and you are nothing."

_**I slew your family, I slew your allies not once but twice!** _

"The ability to slay does not make you mighty. You are weak, empty, a puppet of flesh manipulated to provide a blade of unyielding iron. The entity that uses you needed you because she destroyed her body, once. And she needed a host who could take that dark energy, and manipulated her into doing harm for her own sake. If there were anything of Beryl left I might, I might try to save you no matter how strange this would be for another. But there is not. There is just the demon of fire that's been squatting in the Sun using your voice."

_**Very perceptive, little Princess. It will not save you from death.** _

_Moon Princess Halalation!_

Empowered by the Crystal, her Henshin unleashed not one but nine separate blasts of powerful energy, the very energy that brought the snows of the Arctic into the opened D-point, which crumbled into ashes around them. The blasts ripped into Beryl with power sufficient that it caused her to gasp in pain and shock, the awareness of what she was, what she'd become, that the monster in golden armor that pretended to be a man had been right, whatever else he was, about what she'd welcomed and what it had done to her. In a last despairing wail the portion of Beryl that still existed dissipated into nothing.

Beryl's body sunk to her knees, but while it was grievously damaged the light blazing from her eyes had not dimmed. It only intensified.

 **My turn** , hissed Metallia, and in that moment Beryl's body burst open like an overripe fruit and a gigantic creature of lava whose fires had become a sickly necromantic green stood where she had stood. Her eyes were larger but indisputably those of Metallia.

**You are alone, little princess, but you have done what your mother never managed to do. You brought me here. Congratulations on that limited goal. All your friends and allies are corpses, your beloved prince is hewn in three pieces. And you, little girl, are alone with the monster that has brought you to know the true meaning of failure, not once. Not twice, but three times!**

Metallia's fires blazed still the more intently and Moon stood before her, the Silver Crystal gleaming.

**You have brought to me the Crystal, even. Lured here, to this place. To the great confrontation.**

With that her fires blazed out from her hands in great swooping sheets, but Usagi found the Crystal acknowledging its mistress, forming a shield of light, of love, of compassion, of hope that no monster, no thing of Chaos could hope to break. The flames burned and the ice dissolved into slush, bloody slush, and steam that smelled horrid, amplified by the increased smell of charred flesh. More and more did the flames intensify, but the shielding and strength of Sailor Moon was greater;

"Power is not in Chaos, thing of Muspelheim. It never was, and it will never be. Your kind helped to make existence and the stars that power the Senshi, and most of you are grateful for this and above all else. You are not great, you never were. You were weak, so when the Darkness came to you with promises of power and glory, you foolishly welcomed it and made it your own."

Moon levitated, glowing with a brilliant light. More fires blazed out, tongues of fire and great fireballs and yet they could do nothing to her. Looking out at the bodies around her burned to such a heat that the bones were bleached as white as those in the Palace of the Dead, Usagi's power echoed.

"You have done great evil and sowed ruin, and in this you see glory. All you have done is prove the emptiness of the Great Enemy, and why it can never overcome Senshi. You have shown the power of Death. Let me show you the power of Life, and avenge my mother, and my soldiers fallen for me twice over."

_MOON PRINCESS HALATATION!_

With that, enhanced by the power of the Crystal that sang in unity with its wielder, Sailor Moon counterattacked. Waves of healing power echoed out with a tremendous boom that collided into Metallia's Chaos-ridden flesh and in that singular blast, the shrieking fallen giant of the old days found itself facing the fullness of what had banished her to the Sun, undimmed, no more worries about flinging light into the future and preserving enough power to augment the great and splendid power of the Outer Senshi. The full power of a Jotunn enhanced by the deep strength of the Nothingness, of Chaos.

In that blinding flash of Light, Metallia wailed in the awareness of her own weakness.....and was no more. D-Point's last remnants faded with her, and the Sun's light changed in a way that was not perceptible to science but seemed to mark a fundamental shift not only in the mechanics of sunlight, but of all else. Now clad again in her Fuku, Sailor Moon stood over the bodies of her fallen friends and lover, tears flowing down her face.

A voice spoke to her, seemingly from the crystal, mirroring her fallen mother's voice:

_You can remake this, and them. Ask of me and I shall give it you._

"Bring them all back. But.......I cannot ask people to die for me. Not again."

_All?_

"Yes, all. Let the Palace of the Dead know life. And the fallen castles around the worlds."

She found herself in a trance raising the Silver Crystal and then a powerful blast of energy lanced around the world, and the Solar System. Nine points of light flashed into awareness, the castles knowing their guardians would return. Each of the Senshi came back to life, bodies restored to wholeness, and would awaken in their old homes, though the families of the Outers were not returned to them, their souls having moved on to find peace and new lives and new bodies. Even Serenity herself decided, looking at Earth that was no longer littered with broken bodies but still all too much with pink slushy spots that marked the areas where her friends had fallen, that if this was the price of victory, she did not want it.

The Moon Kingdom lived anew, and it would seem to humanity as though this had always been so. It lived....but she would find a normal life, one freed of the burden of her friends dying for her and having to live with the guilt and the shame of it all.

Serenity closed her eyes......and in Tokyo, in the Tsukino house, it was Tsukino Usagi who was woken up the next day by her brother placing an ice cube down her back and got up roaring "SHINGO, I'M GOING TO KILL YOU!" Her cat with the moon-gem on her head shook her head in an oddly human sense but Usagi ignored this. No magic, no powers, no destiny, no fallen kingdom, no romance -that-was with a prince, only normal Usagi Tsukino, bun-head. Naru would be getting out of the hospital in two days. She looked forward to that.

THE GROUNDS OF THE UNDER-CONSTRUCTION MUGEN GAKKEN::

Pharaoh 90 sat on his command throne with his hands steepled. He had felt the presence of the awakened Princess of the Moon, and then the dawn of a 'new/old' interstellar realm reawakened. No wonder his predecessors had been tempted to try to reverse-engineer starseed.

Looking at the bleached skulls of the first two results of the attempts to reverse-engineer it, he understood why they'd also abandoned the attempt. Not everything could be duplicated. Power was not infinite. He looked up and outward, grateful for the foresight to include reality-alteration proof antimagic in his supplies the moment he'd found in various databases the kind of raw power Senshi and their rulers could wield.

He decided on a whim to check the databases for what the results of that kind of magic could do.

His eyebrow raised. How.....splendid. The little Senshi of the Wind reborn from death, without her powers or any knowledge of who she was, and what she was.

Yes.....this would do nicely.

END OF BOOK I, THE DARK KINGDOM ARC


	25. Book Two: The Dark Moon Clan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> At the start of Book II, various Senshi suffer nightmares, a hidden superhuman figure widens his own network and handles an unwanted visit from the CIA, and in the far future, Crystal Tokyo's great dream begins to stutter and fall.

THE OUTER SOLAR SYSTEM, YEAR 1,000 of CRYSTAL TOKYO:

Small Lady found herself staring in awe at the sight of Neptune clad in the armor she'd taken since......the Lost One vanished. She'd always wondered why only one planet in the Solar System had no Senshi, and nobody had told her. Out of curiosity she had found the truth and the nightmares that followed the scenes of the apocalyptic devastation of Tokyo, and the destruction of the Star-Seed led to angry scenes between her parents, the icy and stiff and austere Queen Serenity, haunted by the dreams of a soldier of hers she'd never managed to save, and the slow decay of Kaioh Michiru into the avenging angel of destruction in the outer system. Puu and Saturn, her great love and her other mother, were people. Flawed people, haunted by that same grief, but not consumed by it.

And there was Kaioh Michiru, now Guardian Neptune, the awesome strength of the Ocean in the body of a being that was and wasn't fully human. Other Senshi did de-transform and become people again, Guardian Neptune had not since the day of her birth, when she'd gone to the Outer Solar System. There were dark things in the abyss of space, one of them had slain Uranus over a thousand years ago and scarred the Senshi irreparably. Others had spoken to the so-called Dark Moon Clan, a group of terrorists who'd objected to the kind of immortality Crystal Tokyo had brought. Small Lady did not know the long and angry debates that had followed the decision to grant humanity immortality at the price of purging its more immoral traits, the Gods of the New Olympus ruling in serene power from the new Lunar Imperium of Humanity, producing a stunted and changed human race. No evil traits, but a society that was basically dead and ruled by superhuman figures who retained the full sweep of human emotions.

Or so it was thought. Then Princes Diamond and Sapphire had made contact with the hidden figure known only as the Wise Man of Nemesis, and things had changed. The white robes and purity of Crystal Tokyo in them was darkened and they, clad in deep obsidian hued armor had regained power and prowess not seen since the coming of the dreadful monster in the Shadow Galactica, and the horrid price paid to banish her. They channeled a power that had seemingly been sealed away. Chaos. The Great Enemy.It granted to them powers of illusion and swords of shadow and other more dreadful things, and it lurked at the outer edge of the System.

Small Lady had wanted to visit Neptune ever since finding out the truth, and so she was given that freedom. Her mother, the ice queen of the Imperium, had said nothing though the worry in her father's eyes haunted her. And now she saw her, as the Ocean-Queen turned to her, stepping off the teleportation platform.

If her mother was the Ice Queen (and Mercury the actual Senshi of Ice), the austere and warlike aura surrounding Neptune was a thing of fear.

"You don't belong here, Small Lady."

All the other Senshi, even boisterous Jupiter of the Thunders, they were all kindness and compassion writ large. Neptune's eyes were hard, and her voice was cold and unwelcoming, far moreso than her mother.

A deep bitterness was in her words as she continued:

"Is this my punishment? Because Uranus can't come back from the Cauldron, I'm a combat soldier turned into a babysitter."

She turned from Small Lady and strode off.

"I saw what happened to Ur-"

With a blinding speed Neptune whirled around, the briny aura that pervaded around her suddenly overwhelming, like the pressure of the deep ocean or the tsunami drawing to shore. and she caught a glimpse of the foe of the Youma and the hostile aliens from the deeper reaches of space.

"Did the Queen put you up to this?"

"N-No."

"Hmf."

Neptune stalked off. Small Lady sat, pouting. Well, this wasn't off to a great start.

It was then that both of them felt that sickly oily element, the foulness of the Great Enemy that seemed to make the stars themselves tremble.

For a moment the iron mask of Neptune cracked and it was the old Kaioh Michiru who turned to her.

"If I tell you to teleport back to the Palace, don't argue. Just do it."

"What?"

"The Dark Moon Clan is coming,"

With that, Neptune drew her Talisman, the mirror shining brilliantly. 

"So be it. And the worst part is that death isn't permanent for me." She sighed, but the great power of the Ocean grew the greater within her, and the sickly feeling of Chaos met the shining power of the Light. Small Lady gazed in stupefied awe.

___________

Kaioh Michiru had had a thousand different takes on this theme in her dreams. She, the rich musician, was tormented by a love for a roommate she did not understand, when her roommate, in spite of being a more directly butch girl outwardly, had a relationship with a man. Part of her swore it was something personal at one level she could not place, but did not want to. _She dreamed of her roommate dying at the hands of a monster, the beautiful blonde clad in a fuku, the monster a blackish hue that no human could reach with deep dark orange splotches, and terrible golden animalistic eyes._

_Always the ruins of a school, others like her roommate, including herself wearing the same outfit and locked, forced to watch as a sphere of telekinetic power beat down Uranus's winds, the Senshi's broken hand dropping the henshin._

_**Now, I finish with the monsters.** _

_The yellow eyes gleamed with a predator's eagerness, and the sickly crack followed, and a bright shining object left her._

_**And I finish....permanently.** _

_And then a mutual howl of grief and sorrow and denial, and the Star-Seed cracked and crumbling into dust, shining teeth gleaming in the dark face, and the monster laughing as he called to himself a very heavily armed spaceship designed by no human hand and levitated into it, the starship taking off._

_That was the usual dream, the thing that made her feelings to Tenoh Haruka so complicated. She loved her, at one level. Why then did she dream of her dying? What was the nature of the outfit?_

_Tonight, the dream was different._

_Not the ruin of the flattened school this time, the ruins of Tokyo, a vast boneyard. All of the Senshi but her had vanished, she knew this instinctively, and then there was the giant that held Haruka like a colossal heavily armored King Kong, the dead light of murdered stars burning from it, the entity like a night sky clad in dark green armor, only by analogy akin to mortals in its motion._

_**Mine the hands that kill, mine the hands that ruin.** _

_**Mine the hands that lay low heroes, mine the house of pain.** _

_**Mine is the lightning flash, mine the hands that stilled the deep salt sea.** _

_**As she is mine, and will be as never had she been, so shall all of you be. The Golden Queen will kill you all and then I shall feast upon her bones.** _

_The walking night sky looked at her and it laughed, coldly and cruelly._

_And with that hallucination dispelled, she saw herself thrown to the side and a woman clad in golden armor that was turning black laughed as her sword impaled Haruka, and her eyes turned to her and they were dreadful things._

Kaioh Michiru awoke, trembling.

\---------------------

A room away, Haruka Tenoh tossed and turned. She was having the dream again.

_In the dream, she was a brilliant figure clad in armor, older than the oldest civilizations, and new as the morning dew. She was flying, gravity trying to hold her like a sullen lover and its grasp too weak. This high up it was always cold, but the frosts and the cold beneath them in the crumbling fortress, well....that wasn't so different either. There were thunderclouds here and another being like herself, clad in that same kind of sailor-like armor, save that her eyes glowed with the lightning and her voice was the thunder. They were heroes, the kind that fought dragons._

_Then a blurring motion and a terrible silence with that motion, no words, no taunts. Only a figure with a terrible blade that glowed as with the life-forces of mortals and superhumans alike that were the greedy foci of its power. The thunder stopped and the skies were clear, one up to the dragons._

_In wrath she turned, and the mistress of the winds unleashed two words that felt like the very world itself shook around her, and a great golden sphere vaporized the figure that was hit, and it turned to her with black eyes and a lizard-like smile._

_She turned and in swiftness sought to prevent the undignified fall of her fellow being and then she felt it. The blade that pierced her hand, and the laughter, cold and malignant, and voices on the air._

_Two-up to the dragons._

_The heroes fell....._

She heard Michiru's cries, somehow, with senses that seemed more keen than ordinary humans. Michiru always had terrible nightmares and never answered what they were. She blinked, shaking, and checked her hands as she did every morning. No, no hole. No trace of a sword.

She shuddered and got dressed. Her boyfriend would be waiting for her at school and she knew even if, as she wanted, she walked with Michiru Kenji would get jealous. It was...not a good idea to make him so.

\--------------

Kino Makoto was having the dream again.

_In the dream she was no longer alone, living with only baking and the dream of becoming a housewife to make the loneliness less so. She was a figure of awe-inspiring strength and freedom in the skies, the thunder her voice, the lightning her will. A vast fortress had begun to fall to her power, sheets of lightning echoing out, the god-fires burning beneath her signs of everything. Besides her there was another, a figure in a fuku much like her own. She was the lightning and the majesty of the thunderstorm. That one? She was the wind, indomitable and untameable, like her an expert in the brute force approach._

_Lighting and wind, the elements of the storm, and together nothing held before them. Gravity could not._

_Monsters, of machine and of something Other, the Outer Darkness lurking at the edges of reality, they were nothing likewise._

_A blur of motion, one her senses registered just a bit too late from inexperience, and one of the monsters moved. And a piercing pain that struck her as the clouds parted, and she heard an outraged shout and two words that she could not fully register, and the sound of weeping and trying with a mouth that could not move to tell her not to reach th-a woman died from a blade in her back, trying to help her._

Kino Makoto awoke, crying. The dream she remembered most. A sense of loss, of guilt, and a desire to make sense of it all.

That morning, she went to school, and on the way, she passed by a tall woman in the outfit of another school, and for a moment she froze.

Tenoh Haruka, the racer, and for a moment, the very image of the woman in her dream.

The woman in turn stopped and stared at her curiously.

"Do I know you?" Her voice was husky and low. It was a shame that the racer was so proverbially straight, as a woman would easily fall for her voice.

"I....I don't think so."

Tenoh Haruka smiled at her, surprisingly warmly.

"You reminded me of a dream I've had. A good one, I think. Tell you what, meet me at the coffee shop two streets down after school, OK?"

Makoto smiled. Maybe she wouldn't be so lonely after all.

\----------

Usagi Tsukino was having that dream again.

_She stood over the corpses of murdered girls, facing a colossus in armor that burned with the light of the corrupted Sun. Words spoken that she did not hear, and a sense of terror that was unimaginable, and of guilt._

She awoke, her cat looking at her with an uncannily human kind of concern that in the early hours of the morning was never a pleasant thing. That day she was more subdued than usual, even Shingo's best efforts to bug her couldn't quite dredge her out of it. She did not know what great sin she'd committed to be haunted by the image of nine murdered people, one man and eight women, plus the taste and smell of monster ashes, but she did not care what it was, or why. The only thing, the only person that actually seemed to help was of all people, Chiba Mamoru. He'd moved from being a bully to being strangely kind and caring, and she didn't know what she was feeling toward him, only that this......the gloom that pervaded her lifted and it seemed one like it did so for him.

One day, she'd woken up in her bed and had been gloomy since, feeling parts of everything missing and she didn't know what was missing, only that things were. Lost in her gloom, she collided into another person and squawked, landing on her face.

"I'm sorry," she said, looking at the other girl. She was a pretty girl with bright blue hair, close-cropped.

"It's all right," and they helped each other get their things back together.

"I'm Tsukino Usagi."

"Mizuno Ami."

"My friend Naru and I are going to the arcade after school. Wanna come with us?"

Mizuno's smile was delighted, and a part of Usagi that she could not explain felt healed.

\-------------

The fires were silent, Rei reflected. She had bad dreams, but she did not remember what they were, and did not want to remember too much. A sword and the sense of loss that followed, and a terrible malignant timeless evil with the foul odor of decay pervading it. This had made her a more devoted Miko, and yet.....the fires were silent, and it was not a good silence. She had recently under a compulsion she could not explain transferred to a new school, where she'd met the other day two obnoxious girls. One with long blonde hair in a flowing waterfall of gold down her hair. The other with buns. That one.....she took a deep breath.

She did wonder what the Chiba boy saw in her?

\------------

PHARAOH 90 INDUSTRIES LABORATORY, NEAR MUGEN GAKKEN:

Irving Christoffels stretched after a long day of desk work. He'd established new factories across Honshu and the basis for his first factories in the Continental United States and in Germany in the European Union, with ambitions to go elsewhere. The kind of technology his society took for granted could be given with the most basic civilian technology, first, and he'd make a fortune in this world's standing. Given his....extracurricular activities and how the ultimate God of this world was Money, the richer he was, the more impunity for him to act. And if he was truly fortunate, by the time he was prepared for the finale of the elimination of the Targets, the Senshi would be helpless to do anything about it.

Activating the drone that followed the Target in Japan that he left alone, for now, knowing she would be the last (and vaguely regretting it at one level but looking forward to it at another), he confirmed what two weeks of studies had indicated. She was back to the lower-tier superhuman abilities she had before awakening. Two weeks ago, she had been for every literal purpose of the word dead and he'd been content that he'd never had to dirty his hands to finish the task with this one. And then something, no, someone had undone the death of nine superhuman figures and quite literally awakened dead worlds in a singular display of power worthy of a Psi-class metanormal in his own dimension. 

He knew who that one had to be, too, after careful checking of the various records of the old Kingdom of the Moon. Having a figure like Sailor Moon in his potential enemies list would complicate matters immeasurably. Unless.....

Looking at the apparatus he'd set up in the new Red Room, he smiled coldly. The girl in Tokyo, that Tenoh Haruka, was the last, but it wouldn't hurt to see how he might turn the existence of such beings and the products of Zarathrustra to his advantage.

He turned on another camera, briefly. The dissected remains of the subjects he'd already killed were on vivid display, along with schematics. The most fascinating element was that no matter whether or not they were swollen bags of flesh or simian monsters with golden fur, at DNA levels they were both human and non-human, bar elements that in every case but, he hypothesized, the last Target, different in each yet reflecting a very narrow margin of difference. He stretched. Soon, he would meet this Tenoh Haruka, who was the reincarnation of a being that had been lesbian in her last life and was somehow not so in this one, and he would draw from her blood as well.

Looking at the Red Room. Perhaps he'd even try to cure the deformities of the Zarathrustra project. There had to be them, after all.

He looked down at the mixture of financial figures and the connections required to build the new factories and groaned in a low and not at all human voice, before speaking in his true tongue.

**_Primitive aliens punish themselves with this system. Sitting hours at a desk doing tasks they could train one of their more primitive relations to do with equal success and meaning._ **

His grumbling was only partially in a human aspect, psionically rendered in a deep guttural rumbling German for anyone who was there to hear.

"Mr. Christoffels?"

"Yes, Miss Saegusa?"

"You have visitors."

"Oh?"

"Americans."

He blinked. Americans. Hmm.

"Send them in."

Making a point to open the blinds in his office, he quietly transformed his clothing from the trouser and tunic he wore in the clothing of his homeworld to armor, depending on which humans.

"Mr. Christoffels?"

"Yes?" 

He turned to look at the two visitors. Both were clad in three piece black suits with ties and wearing sunglasses. One, the one that spoke, was an elderly-seeming white man, the other twenty years his junior, and brown-skinned with a small goatee.

"My name is Mr. Jones, my companion is Mr. Smith."

"How can I help you, gentlemen?"

"We're with the Department of Interplanetary Relations. CIA."

"Gentlemen, I don't mean to be rude, but this is not the United States. In case you haven't noticed, this is Tokyo. If there is a government I answer to, it's the one in Berlin, not Washington." 

The two agents looked at each other. The black man said calmly, with a slightly sarcastic attitude peppering his words, "Mr. Christoffels, we're familiar with aliens, including some of the more powerful psychics. The ones on Mars, for example."

"And?"

"Cut the shit, boy." That was the older white man with the drawl. "We know you're not human. We know you're connected to breaking and entering into our national archives and Project Zarathrustra."

_**Ah, I see.** _

They knew something of what to expect from the reports, but seeing Mr. Christoffels' eyes suddenly become the yellow eyes of a predator and his voice shifting from heavily German-accented English and Japanese to a telepathic battering ram that had them on their knees was...unpleasant.

_**Then you should understand something, gentlemen. I have a greater task to do than to bother with the pretensions of an empire spanning a globe. Your reality was altered around you with dead worlds springing back to life, and you see this as being the way it always was. Pfah. Your kind are weak even by the standards of you Tamirans.** _

With that he raised his right hand, palm splayed, then clenched it.

**_You will go back to Washington and tell them you found a dead end. The next time one of you Americans comes sniffing around my business, I will send the dripping heart of the agent in question to your bosses and the severed head to the family. I am not the kind of aliens you're used to from those other worlds. You would be wise to remember this._ **

With that Agents Jones and Smith found themselves on a flight back to the United States arranged with an all-expenses paid ticket from Pharaoh 90 Industries, finding nothing unusual to report.

The next day the Project Zarathrustra base in Nevada was raided again and a destructive scene on par with a high yield nuclear strike left shattered bones strewn around and the facility disrupted so spectacularly that the government officially blamed unknown terrorists for the activities in question. The warning from the Chinese about the prior attack suddenly became far more believable, and the governments connected to Project Zarathrustra began to go on high alert. Something had taken back the technology that in a Cold War maneuver to transcend the blocs had been gifted to West and East as a secret and no less deadly proof of Communist and Capitalist expertise.

Something had hacked the US Defense Department network, kidnapped an American citizen and returned her with a vague memory of golden yellow eyes and the name 'Christoffels.'

And that same something had merrily waltzed into the interior of China and left an equally grand scene of destruction at another base with the PRC unofficially admitting that it had sent a major troop deployment to try to contain whatever it was. That force had been destroyed with no survivors. It was not that the governments objected to the destruction of monsters that were difficult to contain, exactly, so much as the revelation of power that was evidently unconnected to the Senshi and Youma and other such monsters that had spread worldwide with Sailor V and the rumored other Senshi in Japan, and far more brutally dedicated to spectacular destruction for its own sake.

Agents Jones and Smith only noted that Pharaoh 90 Industries had been very helpful but that the Irving Christoffels of Wittenberg, Germany, had simply noted he had nothing to do with the memory of Miss Tenoh of Nevada of another being with golden eyes and a connection to that name. Global intelligence communities continued to meet in private. Even the returned to duty Sailor V, the only active Senshi at present, had no further advice to offer bar a mention of a contact with a pair of heavily armored aliens of inhuman nature in rugged armor she'd fought and defeated in the past with allies who were for the time being retired.

\------------

SKY KING NIGHTCLUB, DOWNTOWN OSAKA:

The Mikaboshi slouched in her chair in her office. The wealth stolen from the ruins of the Dark Kingdom had let her set up something that would work as quite the nifty place to hide. None would suspect the Solar System Senshi with the power of the Outer Darkness in her veins to settle for something so....banal. The Senshi were quiet, for the time being, bar Sailor V.

The Mikaboshi looked at the hideous scar on her upper arm. That bitch's chains _hurt._ She'd been fine working as the agent of Chaos to punish Metallia, but on her own, against the most experienced of the Inner Senshi who was much weaker than her 'heroic' counterpart would be? She'd barely escaped with her life, and it had been her reliance on the dark and twisted elements of her speed and raw brute force that enabled her to escape. Part of her resented that outside her office and her apartment she had to go covered up, lest the markings of the chains and the kind of burns they produced be visible. It didn't really matter, though.

She knew the alien that had torn his way through the Youma was active, too, but he was well over in Tokyo and fortunately had not yet shown any interest in her. More of her....fellow experiments, she guessed, had died, and she felt the passing of each one in the way she guessed her 'heroic' counterpart did.

Part of her wanted to just go up to Tenoh Haruka, take her sword, and impale her and be done with it.

But....she'd felt all of the Senshi but their accursed Princess _die_ in the Arctic. Truly, utterly, die. Her heroic counterpart fell _eight thousand feet from the sky and was mostly physically intact after that kind of fall._ And V, the accursed general, had routed her and given her the most lopsided asskicking in her life thus far.

The Mikaboshi sighed. Work done for the day. Now.....hedonism. Lots of hedonism with women (and men, lots of men) all too willing to sleep with a near-perfect physical twin of Tenoh Haruka, rising track star.

\-------------

AINO HOUSE:

Aino Minako, the only Senshi fully awakened to her duties, had reawakened first. Not with what she might have expected, with a Youma. She'd encountered a being horribly physically akin to Sailor Uranus save that her hair was a deep dark hue that was an unnatural kind of black that seemed to swallow light into itself. The thing had smiled at her, and tried to intimidate her into an alley, only for her Henshin to reappear, for her to transform, and a brutal battle that occurred mostly over the skies of Tokyo to follow. That thing had terrified her. The raw power matched that of Uranus and the gifts of speed and the wind were there but coarsened and brutalized. The sword....was terribly akin to a version of that which had killed her fellow Senshin in the Arctic but worse.

Then her Love-Me Chain had grabbed the thing in its upper arm through the armor that it wore and it seemed to literally melt the armor around it and it had howled and struck her with a tornado and flown off. She could feel it, in southeastern Japan. She did not intend to go looking for it, it was inexperience with its darker and crueler take on Senshi power that let her defeat an evil variant of one of the Outer Senshi. How such a being could have come to exist puzzled her. Clearly, something had been at work creating something based on Senshi genes.

Part of her said to try to stir up those waters. The rest? The sense of the violation of the soul and the holiness and purity of the Senshi involved meant that she very deliberately refused to, out of fear of what this would mean for her, for all of them.

For now....Sailor V was back in business, and mostly as a standard superhero. The fall of the Dark Kingdom had made things blissfully quiet. She could handle this, and handle it well. She was used to the loneliness of her burden, after all. 


	26. The Times They Are a Changin'

THE DEFENSES OF NEPTUNE, ERA OF CRYSTAL TOKYO, END OF M1:

Small Lady would have nightmares of the aftermath, but the sight that started it all was awe-inspiring. Neptune, the oceanic power of the Light and the roiling storm of the Outer Darkness. First came the monsters, waves of the things that she'd heard once in a whispered conversation between Neptune and her love, Saturn, called Androids. By tens of thousands they surged forward and then a monstrously powerful energetic force charged with the ocean's majesty swept them all away, the horde quite literally disintegrating without a trace.

Her mother's light sustained the Solar System (such a weighty burden to live up to, the part of her that was every bit of her years reflected). Her Senshi were not simply beautiful women, they were deadly efficient soldiers. To witness the oceanic green of that energy surging out and to smell the salltwater and to see the monsters dissolve into ashes and slush chilled her to the bone. It was clear how Neptune and Puu could guard the outer defenses. The monsters vanished, and then _he_ came.

"Run," she heard Neptune speak, the last word she heard.

He strode toward her, clad in a robe, with two eyes shining.

You've fought well, Neptune. In the end, it availed you nothing.

The creature formed a great wicked scimitar of darkness and jammed it toward Neptune as she teleported away on the teleporter in the castle. She did not see Neptune die, though she felt the malignant presence. She did not feel it, not in truth, not until she'd arrived on Earth and knew by the stricken faces of the other Senshi, and the falling to her knees of her love, who held herself and cried at the loss, now, of both her mothers. The oily presence of evil had silenced Neptune's light.

It curdled everything without the palace, but the Palace itself, the heartland of the oncoming Siege, it began to glow not just with the light and the presence that the Senshi could witness, but it burned as a pillar and sword of light that cut through the darkness, a defiant blade that reached high into the heavens.

The Imperium's heart thrummed to a rhythm it had never known since before she was born. When Galaxia had come with a sword of darkness and the Senshi had prevailed against her and the Great Enemy. The Senshi had prevailed then, even one less, permanently, and one world fewer. It had taken them much, and it made the Palace this.....this thing. Galaxia had fallen, but on her great throne Queen Serenity had replaced the dress of peace with the armor of bright and burning gold she had seen before, modeled after the mightiest of all the Senshi.

She remained on the throne as the shield of all humanity, and out in the darkness, a terrible gibbering began to prevail in the shadows.

JUBAN HIGH SCHOOL:

Michiru gritted her teeth at the sight of Haruka with her leg wrapped around her boyfriend, the two kissing. They were roommates who shared the same house with a middle school student (which nobody questioned, the merits of being rich and getting the full financial windfall of same). They did not share the same bedroom. All there were dreams, countless dreams, of Haruka in a strange outfit dying horribly at the hands of one or another of three monsters. The girl in gold, the heavily armored alien that called itself Pharaoh 90, or falling from the sky holding another girl with her body going grey and a sword that seemed to visibly drink their blood.

Michiru closed her eyes, a tear falling, and left. Out of his peripheral vision, Kenji saw this and smiled inwardly, breaking the kiss.

He knew Haruka was at least bisexual, if not gay. She also owned more money than he would see even in his dreams and had dreams of being a car racer she was already starting to fulfill. He.....

He was not jealous of Kaioh Michiru, not in that sense. He did not understand why a mostly gay girl wanted him so badly as this one did. And.....if it ended up with them sweethearts and eventually him financially very well off, well his half-formed schemes might quite literally pay off. He was still the more grateful that he had classes with Haruka, his first three, and that they would be going out that afternoon.

The day passed as a blissfully normal one. The wave of monsters that had plagued the world for a time had seemed to vanish following _something_ in the northern snows. Then again, there had been another _something_ in the United States, a something too big to be covered up. The world speculated that it was proof of extraterrestrial life. The fantasy of Haruka cowering from a tall bug-eyed thing from Outer Space and his rescuing her as a night in shining armor danced behind his eyes. He was rudely brought out of it by his history teacher asking him the name of the man who'd tried to become Emperor instead of the Emperor and he stuttered and embarrassed himself. It was Tenoh Haruka who answered lightly "Taira no Masakado" to the teacher's approval, and then smirked as she showed him a glimpse of the novel she was reading in class. He couldn't resist another snicker, this time disguised as a cough.

He was astronomically lucky, but all too aware of the glares that Kaioh Michiru sent at him and what if they were palpable his body would look like. The Kaiohs were a rich, ruthless family with rumored connections to the Yakuza. It made him oddly cautious and self-conscious. And he wasn't entirely sure it was paranoia. For someone so refined, there was a coldness in the eyes of Kaioh Michiru that made him watch out for her on a regular basis.

As always, this meant he was pleased to get out of school, with the two of them separated from her.

Then it happened. A tall bald Gaijin with a bulky build, like that Arnold from the American movies except stouter, strode up to his girlfriend. He was bald with a thick beard but a clean-shaven upper lip and eyes that were strange. They looked.....brown, perhaps, but he wasn't entirely sure. They were hazy, somehow, in a way that made no true sense. He remembered a few of the whispered stories of the kind of monsters that had prevailed in the dark alleys, the things that killed families and that the Senshi never quite tracked down before they'd vanished. 

He only heard "Ich heisse Irving Christoffels, Sie kommen" and then Haruka and the burly man started to leave and she followed him as if she was entranced. He stared stupidly for a moment and then shouted "Hey, you, get your hands off of her".

He chased after them only to see the tall hulking figure turn to him. Then he noticed the eyes were a bright and animalistic gold and he woke up a few hours later in his room, uncertain what had happened, precisely. Certain of only one thing.....Haruka was not there with him.

\-------------

Tenoh Haruka had seen the strange man walking up to them, and noticed that the crowds seemed to somehow naturally and artificially give him a great berth. He was nearly six feet tall, and built with a tremendous bulk that was... not quite natural. But when he spoke to her, he spoke in the perfect Ainu of her homeland, and she was amazed that a Gaijin knew the language, and it intrigued her. Her boyfriend squawked even as she heard Irving talking about sponsorships and a new contribution to her racing career from the new rising company of Japan, Pharaoh 90 Industries. She heard that, then she saw the man turn to him and he said something in a language that she knew indisputably wasn't Japanese. Then to her shock and horror she noticed the eyes were a horribly familiar animalistic gold, and her boyfriend strode away and got on a bus and went off.

The same figure turned to her with that gaze that did not belong in or on a human face.

_**Now.....come.** _

There wasn't any pretense of Ainu here, only an alien mind that hammered into her own. Obediently Tenoh Haruka followed and the passage of time and how she arrived seemed to blur into itself, until she awoke in a laboratory that smelled of two contradictory things. A heavy impression of the sterile smell of hospitals.....and a reeking odor of blood and viscera that seemed straight out of her nightmares. A tread followed, and it did not walk as a human walked. The door opened and she saw within a labcoat and a strange kind of garment that seemed to be and yet was not a kind of secondary armor and a mask the figure that had spoken to her. She knew it was him, because the eyes were golden. But the face was not that of a man's.

_**You are the last of the quarry I seek, Tenoh Haruka. I have only slain a few of them. I have over a dozen more to go.** _

He smirked as things moved of their own will and she grasped, somehow, that it was his mind that moved. The objects were vaguely akin to blades but gleamed with strange lights and unlights she could not understand. 

**_You are the only one of woman born of Project Zarathrustra, so you offer with the samples taken of your mother the closest thing to a baseline. You are not truly a person, just a weapon who fancies herself one. So I promise you no anesthetic, and full awareness of the pain and that there is nothing you can do to stop it._**

His smile was cold and the teeth unnaturally white, standing out against the near-ultrablack of his skin and the bright red marks on his face only made it worse. He seemed more than a Youma, far more. The things descended and the white pain blotted out Haruka's vision. She could not say how many hours passed in Pharaoh 90 Industries, or what was more terrible. The deliberate attention to ensuring a proper amount of sterilization or the dispassionate nature of the hellish scenes. She knew awareness briefly when she heard the thing speaking in a true-voice in a deep and impossibly so voice no human vocal cord could have produced without permanently wrecking a voice under the strain. The language was oddly beautiful, and the jarring contrast between the deep and hideous voice and the tongue that the voice spoke in added its own surreality.

Then it raised something else and smiled, and she heard another phrase that would recur in her nightmares. A syringe full of a strange substance and made so by telekinetic force moved to her and she tried to thrash and move, but her power was held down by something far stronger than she was. As it lanced toward her, she caught a glimpse of a thing that shone and she sought to grasp it in her hand. Then the syringe struck and the shining light winkled out and she fell unconscious. 

The entity who had taken to himself the name Pharaoh 90 and was now relishing the role smiled with a cold satisfaction. The Henshin, the thing that let the Senshi transform, had begun to materialize and the substance she was injected with had made it vanish. This was truly intriguing, this was a common kind of metanormality-nullifier that worked on creatures with this body-shape across many worlds. More of the sensors took blood samples and connected to the slight holes in her scalp and parts of her various systems that threaded like a horrid blend of an octopus and a vampire.

He viewed the results equally dispassionately, and then his eyes narrowed. The nullifier prevented her gaining full control of the Henshin, but it could not negate the power of the.....what was the term again? He pondered, then snapped his finger. The Star-Seed. That was it, yes. Star-Seed. It appeared this was where the earlier experiments had failed and how it made the monsters. The Star-Seed of the Senshi were their souls, and their reborn families had connections, however distant, with the royal families of the old planets, often briefly reborn for that purpose of restoring them and bringing them back to life. One could not quite grow a soul in a laboratory as the older generations sought, and if one viewed a soul as merely a source of superhuman power as the aliens in the two great empires did....well that would explain the monstrosities that arose.

He looked at the bloodstained Haruka Tenoh, the syringe having nicked a vein, and clicked his teeth. Telekinetically closing the vein and moving out a healing poultice, he froze. The vein was now securing itself back in spite of his samples, and the nullifier.

His eyes narrowed further. So that was how powerful the Senshi healing factors were. Good to know. The monsters thus far had been the kind of horribly tough foes no amount of conventional firepower short of a fuel-air explosive securing a direct hit by it just standing there while the bomb fell right on it would break. The Senshi themselves......

With that, he removed all evidence of the experimentation and it was a very confused Tenoh Haruka who staggered not to her boyfriend's home, but into the car of a Kaioh Michiru who'd received a frantic call from her roommate's boyfriend and been told she'd vanished with the strange Gaijin. Seeing Haruka stagger home clearly in pain made her eyes narrow. She looked at Pharaoh 90 Industries and then she blinked. From a floor up in a window, a burly white man with strange eyes of indeterminate color locked eyes with her and smiled, and then somehow she'd arrived home and scolded Haruka for giving her boyfriend a fright. Then he saw a girl in a fuku and a mask looking at him, and his eyes briefly turned golden and she started, then stared blankly and vaguely stupidly, and flew off, wondering what had led her to go there in the first place.

Her roommate was pale, trembling. Holding onto her for dear life in a very tempting position, boyfriend be damned. Something had happened, something bad. There was a place......

She listened to the boyfriend's message again. "The Gaijin from Pharaoh 90 Industries! He took her!" 

Why did that place sound familiar? She shrugged.

\--------------

TSUKINO HOUSE:

Tsukino Usagi had enjoyed making a new friend. Mizuno Ami and Naru got along splendidly, Ami's trollish sense of humor contrasting with Naru's rolling with anything and everything. They'd gone to the arcade that afternoon, and she'd seen a strange tall brunette who stood waiting, only to see a young man storm into the room, looking around and shaking his head. He was an older boy, from the high school. And the brunette was taller than he was. Something was very familiar about-oh yes, somehow she knew the name when their eyes met. Kino Makoto.

For a moment a strange flash of memory.

_A girl flying in the air beneath thunderclouds whose eyes were lightning and the thunder her voice, and a field of weaponry that erupted in rows of fire._

_Dense fog in which lurked terrible monsters, and lightning stalked the fog, and the monsters died._

The moment passed, and she looked at the startled expression on Mizuno's face. The blue-haired girl looked just as bemused as she, and then she stalked forward, and both introduced themselves to Kino, who was worried and vaguely disappointed that one person she was hoping to meet hadn't shown up.

Within fifteen minutes all of the girls were enjoying playing a game and they felt a strange piece of forgotten loneliness awakening again.

\-------------

THE TENOH-KAIOH JOINT APARTMENT:

Kaioh Michiru's worried look was not eased when the doorbell rang and she saw a short blonde girl in a fuku.

"Sailor V," she gasped.

"Yes, me. I heard something happened to your friend."

"Yes, something with......a place. I don't remember where."

V looked at her, started to open her mouth as if to answer, then raised her finger.

"Huh. I don't remember either."

She blinked. "Senshi memories are not easy to alter. Maybe.....maybe her friend just panicked?"

"Her boyfriend. Maybe so. He did say she went off with an older white man."

"Well, it's not like that's always especially safe, even in Japan. He must be a good man."

Kaioh Michiru's gaze was hostile enough that V flinched, watching her gaze at Haruka with a firey intensity. "Maybe."

"Well, since everything's....all right enough, I shall be going." With an awkward smile she levitated into the air and then flew off with a sonic boom as Michiru shook her head faintly with a smile.

She still hated Aso Kenji and wanted to smack him for daring to touch the woman she loved, but there was nothing in this she could use against him. Just dark and terrible dreams that continued without end.

That night when she saw in her dreams the blurry figure who she vaguely remembered from a tower and that his eyes turned golden and he was no longer a man, with Haruka in a sphere of destructive force, instead of being jerked awake, a shining brilliant light echoed in her room. An object descended and landed in her hand. She slept a contented, mercifully nightmare-free rest for the rest of that night.

The next afternoon she went into a private space where few people were looking and took the object she'd carefully hidden and spoke words of power in a kind of trance. In a shining brilliant light, Sailor Neptune was reborn. And then Kaioh Michiru remembered _everything_ and the awareness of just what was lurking in Pharaoh 90 Industries led to her being mortally terrified. Now.....now she would have to keep Haruka away from the place at all costs.


	27. 'A sword time, a red time'

THE NEXT DAY:

After a blissfully normal day, the Senshi would find themselves reawakened when their Princess regained her henshin. That began with a strange set of events that led to the immediate closure of schools and scenes of panic worldwide. The skies had begun to burn with flame that gave off a palpable heat. Crops wilted in the fields, rivers seemed to boil away, and a strange set of antisounds echoed in the skies. Then the fires consolidated into a burning column with the antisounds continuing to echo. One sounded uncannily like the echoing of a sword, the other like....there was no analogy for sounds like that. The streak of fire landed in Tokyo, and it formed into two beings.

One moved like a body fractured by the gap between light and water. it was not flesh or stone or metal or bone or chitin but somewhere in between all of these things, and it was all of them, and it was none of them. The thing had seven arms, four clustered on one side, one vast, the others small. Three equally big ones on the right side, and what was and wasn't two heads, each with eight eyes. It bellowed in a shrieking sound that echoed across the Pacific, echoing across all of Korea and into Siberia up to the Lena and equally far south into China.

On the right was a towering figure clad in dark golden armor, a being made of magma, dark black. Dark as night, with veins of bright red burning through it. The thing, like its opponent, was gigantic by merely human standards though both were dwarfed by the fire-melted skyscrapers around them. The armor of dark gold ended in talons of equal hue and appearance, a great sword in the left hand, and a shield covering the right. Fire rippled up the sword like liquid, and the giant on the right moved and the Earth seemed to shake with the motion. For a being twenty-five feet tall in armor proportionate to its bulk it moved with an overpowering speed and so did the foe it faced, and new blistering echoes shook the Earth. Tsunamis were made that ravaged across oceans, cities melted in the awe-inspiring heat.

Such was the presence of the entity in the armor that its merely descending from the skies caused Henshins to appear in the hands of all the Senshi, and on the Earth, and within the Earth the presence of the entity in the armor was such that the gravitational force of Earth itself began to tilt around it and its foe. The future Senshi who were older and wiser and faced Chaos itself knew the presence of the Great Enemy, the greatest foe within this universe, and its presence. The things that fell from the sky and leveled the northern part of Honshu, and all of Hokkaido, Sakhalin, and Kamchatka were something Other, the things of the great and infinite Outer Darkness.

The thing in golden armor finally prevailed and smote the other on the flaming sword and its corpse erupted in a massive explosion easily detectable from space.

It was then that it turned to see Sailor Moon, who had retaken her form, and all of her Senshi facing it.

It was massive, as massive as the great Oni they had defeated in the fog. The heat was terrifying, like flying close to the Sun. Worst was that this thing was akin to Metallia, Metallia as she might have been. And yet....there was an aura of menace, and of arrogance. Then a voice of tectonic power that was somehow feminine for all that echoed: 

**What are you supposed to be?**

The thing spoke somehow in Japanese, the refined Japanese of Tokyo.

"We are the Senshi, the pretty-suited sailor soldiers of love and justice! This is our world, monster."

**So it is. And if I wanted to destroy it, or deemed it too infected with a greater taint, my great sword here, well....it would destroy it. And there would be nothing you could do, to stop it. The Great Enemy you fight is not the only thing out there, Sailor Moon. Be grateful it was not the Butcher who fell from the stars, I, the Fateful Lightning and my terrible swift sword merely content myself with considering parts of the world fallen into the sea a good exchange for a worthy fight.**

In a flash of light the entity vanished, and Usagi found her crystal in her hand, sparkling and gleaming with a brilliant light.

She had brought her Senshi back from the dead. Could she do this?

The Crystal glowed and she levitated into the air with it, and within a few minutes half of Japan, and parts of Russia was raised from the sea, the cities and people and animals returning to life. The parts of Korea that were leveled in the process were likewise repaired, and watching the process unfold meant all the Senshi on Earth (all save Pluto, who had not returned since the end of the strife with the Dark Kingdom) beheld the light and power of the Princess. As one they knelt before her in a way they had not in the time of the Dark Kingdom and the strife with it.

It was Sailor V, who removed her mask, and spoke an oath the others echoed, an oath of fidelity, of love, and of obedience. She turned around. Tuxedo Kamen was there, too, and then he knelt and repeated the same oath, and all of them rose only when she, Princess Serenity, bid them rise.

It was Mars who spoke after the enchanted silence faded:

"A new enemy is coming. Not here yet.....but it will be. We need to brace ourselves."

"I agree," Neptune's words were cooler than those of Mars, and she nodded. "I have seen the same thing. I do not know the precise nature of this foe but it is something that hates us more personally than the Dark Kingdom."

The Senshi started. The memories of death were there, things that would haunt them moreso now that they were memories and not merely nightmares.

It was Jupiter who broke the silence and the looking at the ground and each other's boots, anywhere but each other.

"We beat the Dark Kingdom. We'll beat this, too. Whatever it is."

They all nodded and placed their hands on each other, and it was Saturn, little Saturn, who put her hand out first, with Tuxedo Kamen last. They nodded, determined.

THE DOORS OF TIME AND NIGHT:

At the outer edges of time and space, the Guardian of the Gates watched a future tremble, knowing its last days were nigh. Neptune had fallen, fallen after a long and heroic battle against the very incarnation of Chaos, the second after Galaxia. Before, Galaxia had mercilessly, brutally slain them all, even if the Outers had fought together and fought hard. She had slain them quickly and terribly all the same and resurrected them as mindless thralls to wage war on the Princess. Then, Neptune, bereft of Uranus, a soldier with nothing left to lose, had fought long and hard, and bitterly. She had wounded him, wounded it, given him a scar he would remember beyond the end of time.

It was this that had led it to kill Uranus in the first place and to wield aliens to do so, to manipulate all things to try to wound Neptune. And now.....now Chaos realized even for all its dreadful force, it could not stop someone who had enormous power, will to wield it in battle, and nothing to lose. Even on its terms, such a foe was too human and too superhuman to die easily, and cleanly. A tear flowed down her cheek. Soon, Small Lady would come, when the Darkness, in its wounded and vengeful form struck the Palace and beseged it. She would come, she would take the Key.

The part of her that had been and would again be Meiou Setsuna wanted her family back. She knew exactly what she would tell her.

And in the distant past, she saw the rest of the Senshi placing their hands together with Tuxedo Kamen, whose relationship to Usagi was only in its very earliest stages, in the nebulous element between a growing friendship and what would become an enduring romance. She heard the oath as vividly as if she were there, she knew of the day half of Japan sank into the ocean and with it parts of Russia, and when Sailor Moon's raising it from the sea meant that the existence of Senshi was confirmed beyond doubt. She knew of the Adversary in its lair just to the south of the blast zone, and of the third great strife that awaited beyond this one.

She knew so many things, and it was not yet time to leave the Doors, to go be with her fellow Senshi. To the one who was outside Time and Space, there was no true passage of time, everything was yesterday-now-far future. She saw the future after the Senshi died, when the skulking figure that lurked on the fringes, Earth's own monster built to purge Chaos and its friend-sister-sometimes lover (for Gods, even infant Gods, were never very particular about kinship bonds) with him. A far future of battle and destruction, when little children were made into bloated monsters in clanking insect-armor and waged vast wars against the shadowy monster that lurked and had transformed when an alien empire died and remade the Galaxy in the wake of its ruin, and changed the Enemy slightly with it.

Chaos was many things, a mindless force of destruction, the anti-impulse, in its first stages. Come the end, it was an armored girl in gold, a hubristic being that deemed herself the appointed doom of the end of all things. Or it was a great giant in black armor, a tank in the form of a man, the betrayed son of a dying empire that marked the failure in centuries of the alternative vision to that of the Senshi, even those like her built to shield systems in fire and fury.

And it was the Great Enemy that was returning. Returning....and returning in a way that would bring her fellow Senshi to her, and where she would face a choice, a choice to decide futures that had already been, would never be, and were being formed. The Doors were a curse, but they were a curse with more than a few benefits to their name.

And all this because a thing of the Outside, of the Multiverse, had fallen into their universe with a foe and leveled half of Japan, and at a stroke dealt a blow no magic could alter. Even with the Lunar Kingdom restored, the Senshi were still their selves of Earth and their kingdoms too amazed at the wonder of resurrection after a ten thousand year sleep, being rebuilt to await the return of their masters. But now they were their selves of Earth, not just Japan. When magic returned after millennia of being a thing of fireside tales and children's stories.....

The oncoming darkness surging toward a tower whose sword of light burned high and made the darkness tremble reminded her that with magic came dragons and monsters.


	28. 'Till Heaven Crack'

CRYSTAL TOKYO, END OF M1:

The Imperium's vast fortress sprawled over all of what had been the Kanto Plain and a major portion of what was once the island of Honshu. It was bifurcated by the great mountains in the heart of Japan, a place of refuge hollowed out, where the civilian workers hid. Soldiers had sprung to duty, each associated to their worlds. Only one world was absent, a dead world, a realm of methane that spun on its odd axial tilt, silent, the magic at its heart destroyed. The rest were zealous, even as the shadows continued to tremble and to remain away from the blade of light that carved up. The vast legions landed in drop pods near the outer edges of the palace, but found themselves barred by its wards, yet each hurling sally from the pods was a small call upon the power and attention of Queen Serenity.

Her daughter, nearly a thousand years old and still a child, the most spectacular case of prolonged childhood and held as proof that the immortality the Dark Moon Clan provided made monsters in the guise of humans, stayed at her side, fiddling with her Henshin. Her Senshi minus Puu prowled the roofs, dense fog banks shielding the locations of gun turrets on the roof, visors granting those at the guns perfect accuracy amidst the fog. Rays of energy from Venus marked with those awe-inspiring words of power were matched by Saturn's own blasts, the ones that dealt the greatest ruination. Fogbanks were matched by great stormclouds, the equivalent of a vast and monstrous typhoon system, leading to awed mutters of "Kralizec," from those who remembered an old legend often told. When Gods became real and the future's course was altered.

In that legend-cycle the Kralizec was the Typhoon struggle, with Arafel in its herald, the Cloud-Darkness at the end of the Universe. The Golden Queen had not brought the Arafel. The hordes of the Dark Moon, empowered by the terrible shadow side of the Moon and the forbidden powers......they came in throngs of partially human android-like creatures, shambling horrors with a sliding scale of humanity. In clouds of shadowy energy that the bolts of Jupiter and the fires of Mars repelled with a contact that left eerie witch-lights.

And in the end, they came with a figure that descended from the sky in merely human size, keen Senshi-sight seeing him, the rest not. He was empowered by the Great Enemy, so horribly akin to the tragic Golden Queen that had come a thousand years ago. The malignant dread of his presence was palpable even to mortals, the sickly oil-feeling, the blood-smell, the grave-smell making noses wrinkle and deranging aim. The Wise Man of Nemesis landed amidst the Senshi and on the wards of the Palace with a triumphant peal of laughter, the thunderstorm of the apocalypse to match the terrible power and prowess of the Senshi.

All of them thronged him at once and he moved with great speed and dexterity. He did not need to kill them, only to humble them, to cast down the Golden Queen on her great throne, and then all would be his. Her Crystal in his possession, and the future made anew in the image of Chaos. A premonition troubled him. A Golden Giant that followed in his steps, going to to Neptune and moving her from death to stasis, a great sword of fire at his side. The Anathema, ever the Bane of Chaos, that harried his steps and made him hasty, and in itself the harbinger of a foul cycle that would repeat itself, Chaos dancing on the grave of the splendor of all else.

He fought the Senshi and such was the power of Chaos that he was able to scatter them, to render them unconscious, to hurl Mars and Mercury headlong over the palace with such force their fellow Senshi rescued them and prepared their joint strike, but by then he'd hammered his way through the roof.

As a spirit of darkness blazing with the fury of Chaos's might he swooped down and in his train the walls began to bleed and to display monstrous faces, the will of Chaos all the same dispelled behind him. Powerful he was, but a limited power. The Crystal, he must.....

The Wise Man landed, and he saw the Queen on her great throne. Smiling, he formed a great scythe and raised it over his head like the image of the old mythology of death and the dead. A terrible blast landed out yet the King, master of the Golden Crystal dispelled it, and moved with his Sword and the two began a ferocious duel as the Queen prepared a great strike. An impulse occurred to Small Lady, who decided to take her own action rather than being hidden within her mother's shadow. They needed Uranus, they needed Neptune, and they needed.....she could fix this.

In her hand the Silver Crystal sparked and the Wise Man howled a furious shriek of denial, while possessing its power for the first time gave Small Lady the confidence to give him a mocking wave and blow him a kiss that made him still more enraged. The stunned look on her parent's faces was followed by a dreadful blast that left them unconscious, needing stasis, and Small Lady found herself at the Doors, somehow. Impossibly.

THE DOORS OF TIME AND NIGHT:

It was always a strange chill here, not the grave-chill redolent with the smell of decay and viscera, the sense of entropy and haunting dead empires and gleeful daemons that danced on their graves that haunted Chaos's elements of timeless and ancient elements at the same time. It was also not a warm timelessness even with Puu's stern yet welcoming eyes. She saw her, tall, the tallest of the Senshi after Jupiter and the Lost One. Red eyes gleamed with the power of Time responding to its mistress.

"You can change this, Small Lady."

Her words were quiet and welcoming.

"It is a grave risk you take, but it is a risk that is worth all that you can achieve. Save them all."

Then in a quieter sense, a strangled sob muffled between the first word and the two after it, she spoke another sentence: "Save.......my family."

Small Lady nodded and took the key and willed herself to go back to the dawn, before Crystal Tokyo had yet to be dreamed, when her parents were merely starting to fall in love. A timeless existence followed and a strange sense of stretching, a metaphorical vision of the Earth revolving around the Sun in reverse, the Freeze, the coming of Galaxia, the Queen of Dreams, Lord Pharaoh 90 and the death of the Lost One, then....darkness.

A great aurora-like energy formed over Tokyo that night and at its heart a star seemed to fall from Heaven. In the midst of the star was a little girl who was not a girl at all, in truth having the mind and wit and cynicism of a woman every bit her 800 years and desperate to change this, on a mission she could not explain. The Crystal gleamed, a sense of her own destiny waiting. Her own group of four yet to come, the future of all that is or would ever be. The haunting voice of Puu and her entreaty to Small Lady to change things. The star fell and seemed to phase into the walls of the Tsukino house, where the magic of the Silver Crystal spoke to its twin, and quietly inserted new memories and a new presence in the minds of all save the two Maus and the wielder of the first Silver Crystal in this time and this place.

\----------

TSUKINO HOUSEHOLD:

The next morning, Tsukino Usagi stretched herself awake. Shingo was happily chattering away in the kitchen.....she froze. There was a voice there, a strange voice that did not belong. It both was and wasn't the voice of a child. She shivered. There were many things that could do such a thing, and if the Youma of the new Enemy were taking the form of a child.....

She got dressed, cautiously, in her outfit for school and treaded lightly, her henshin in her hands.

Then she froze. Shingo saw her and blew her a raspberry and she glared at him. That was normal. So was her mother fussing over food and her father over his newspaper.

Then her eyes turned to the end of the table, next to her own seat. There sat a girl with pink hair in smaller odangos, and a face uncannily like her own.

"What the fu-"

"Language!" tsked her mother.

Usagi stared, mouth moving like a goldfish.

"Having another one of those days, Sis?" Shingo's voice had a lilt of sarcasm that her newly teenage brother was just starting to explore and inconsistently good at, for further annoyance. "Chibiusa makes it easy, I admit."

The pink-haired girl dope-slapped her brother on the side of the head. With an awkwardness to match that of one of the characters in the recent comedy she'd seen from the American director Mel Brooks, she sat at the table and quietly ate her breakfast. The strange girl went off to school with her.

If not for the fact that she knew whoever this was was not her sister, the way everyone, even her friends and fellow Senshi believed her to be, it would have been a good day. Going out with Mamoru on one of their first dates was soured slightly by both the strange girl, and the curious way she looked at Mamo-chan and he at her. She shrugged. Nothing to be done about that.

Dinner was good, and she only partially remembered Mamoru's words, but the words she did remember were lovely.

\------------------

PHARAOH 90 INDUSTRIES:

Lord Pharaoh 90, as Yrvin Heshatani had begun to treat himself in his thoughts, as the return of the Kingdom in the stars meant there were powerful telepaths who were now looking for the monster hidden in the heart of Tokyo, detected the first time distortion-aurora easily enough. It was Senshi-derived, connected to or perhaps the same power through time and space to what had resurrected the dead and raised parts of islands and a continent from the waters and restored all life.

Then he detected a second, a much darker and more malevolent variant, vaguely akin to the energy from the old Dark Kingdom, though separated from D-Point. This was an energy much more affected by the power of Death itself, and the quest against immortality. It was a power that had followed the Crystal. A problem for the Senshi, and a welcome distraction from his quest. He had slain three of the monsters, and had detected the presence of one other in the United States. It would be a simple matter of bulldozing his way into the United States, again.

First, he would need to secure his company against the unwanted presence of more Senshi.

\-----------------

RUINS OF PROJECT ZARATHRUSTRA BASE, NEVADA:

A darkness had come from the skies and the east to Nevada several times. The first time it had taken a mortal and returned her with a mind scarred by the presence of a greater one. The second it had slain the thing most monstrous in body but the only one with an element of a soul, one that had welcomed death.

The third had been to investigate the breakout of the lesser darkness lurking in southwestern Japan.

She could not allow it to come a fourth. She was the greatest success bar the child that had gone to Japan, somehow, along with all the other Senshi.

She knew she did not have a soul, the same knowledge that had driven the lesser monstrosity in southwestern Japan to call a demonic force into her soul to give her the image and the likeness of one. The lesser darkness had taken the Great Enemy into herself.

Nameless, a girl of vaguely Ainu appearance with hair that was somewhere between golden and platinum blonde, could not allow this. She was loyal to her Princess, and the Gauntlets and Bracelets on both hands that had given her transformation its codename sang to her with the desire for release.

She had been sedated following the awakening when she had spoken the words without permission. Now, the sedation was wearing off and the casual presence of a malignant and terrible alien from the stars was enough to ensure that the vigilance that would have otherwise been there was lacking.

Relying on her true strength, Nameless ripped the manacles off her arm and snapped the chains, then did the same with her legs. Clad in a variant of medical scrubs she staggered out, an innate and strange kind of healing clearing out the last of the anesthetics (no wonder they had given her the quantity to subdue a blue whale when a mere six hours absent constant renewal of the dosage meant it wore off without ill effect).

She smashed open a door, and stared for the first time in the night at the very stars themselves, glorying in the sense of freedom and the wind.

She spoke the words of power:

_Iron Hands Power, Awaken!_

In a blinding flash of light weak and guilty Nameless was gone, and the eyes of Sailor Iron Hands, the first and for a long time only of the kind of entities the Senshi would come to know as the Animates, and the only one created by human artifice unknowingly, looked at the skies. She levitated, exulting in the power that was hers to call upon elements of the wind.

She was not their master, only one was that. Even the lesser darkness in Osaka wasn't, truly. She called upon the shadow-elements of wind, the kind that dessicated ground and ravaged buildings. Destruction, not creation. Sailor Iron Hands, the product of super-science that delved where nothing should have delved, commanded no less a power than that of Cyclones, a blend of air and sea that left with the aching sense that she would never able to claim what was the birthright of the Senshi of the Wind. She needed her Princess, she needed to speak to her. She.......

Sailor Iron Hands flew to the northeast, toward the islands of Japan.

She needed many things, but there was enough of a person in the American Animate to know that if she went to her Princess in civilian identity as the powerful embodiment of the Kamikaze that she would be treated with fear and abhorrence. She would gain her penance for the sin of her existence in her own way.

She landed in Tokyo and spoke a second phrase:

_Iron Hands Power, Conceal!_

In another blinding flash of light, Nameless stood in her scrubs and gauntlets that were and were not her hands.

She would need clothes, clothes....and she would go to Kyushu. Tokyo was dangerous, and she could not linger overlong where the new skyscraper near the waterfront with 'Pharaoh 90 Industries" and the sigil of a Sunburst lurked. A modern day dragon's lair.

She could also not afford to go to Osaka and face the thing that lurked in that city. Not yet. That thing knew more of the power of what she was, and how she was. It would be a long road, but Nameless and her other self, the immortal and mighty Sailor Iron Hands would walk it, and in the end, redemption lurked. It was the only thing that kept her from being the deranged bedlam things in the cells she sensed elsewhere....or the lesser shadow in Osaka that skulked, its great service to Chaos in disposing of the trace of old failures complete, and now a purposeless spirit of hate.

That afternoon a clothing store reported a strange break-in. An entire set of clothing in a specific size was stolen. The clothes were never found, the unconscious Senshi magic of Sailor Iron Hands transforming them. Likewise, an empty apartment had a new tenant who was now always there and rent seemed to magically materialize for two months until she had a new job. Tetsunote Daremo, the name that Nameless had given herself for lack of imagination, would become a very willing employee in a convenience store who made a point of working the first shift, and spending much of the middle part of the day shopping and sleeping.

None knew what to make of her, nor of her presence.

\------------

A DERELICT BUILDING ONCE USED BY THE DARK KINGDOM, SEATTLE, USA:

The Wise Man of Nemesis had ordered this place, once a relic of an older set of potential Senshi foes and laid low by Sailor V, to become their headquarters. Future technology was at their disposal to to go across oceans to Japan and back again would be a simple matter of teleportation. Outwardly, the Dark Moon Clan would become Oppenheimer Industries, a new arms dealer that would experience a meteoric rise and an equally meteoric fall. As Pharaoh 90 Industries released a new pharmaceutical supply that the FDA found itself approving in the shortest time of anything that it would ever do so, within a month of its release worldwide, they would move into the arms industry and give new weapons. Things that were akin to firearms but were not, that harnessed in a small way the power of the Sun itself.

Not bullets, but beams of plasma, the power to set the stars alight. A power that would, in the event of the Senshi somehow prevailing, permit a new escalation in the ways of war and thus in Chaos's eyes, permitting itself to feed and slake itself and to prepare the groundwork for the coming of its greatest foe, the one assured to prevail over the Senshi.

The Pink Rabbit had gone to Japan, and that would require a set of changes, to seek to sniff her out, and to test the new Senshi. The future ones made the androids things that were easily disposed of and disposable. Their fledgling selves?

Soon two factories were up and running. One developed the first prototypes of the new kinds of plasma weaponry, small arms and mortars, initially, that would be offered. Desmond Prince, along with Jim Prince (the name that Prince Sapphire adapted), and Em Prince, the name used by Emerald, were the owner and the two chief stockholders in the new company. Various androids brought from the future and marking the same process, officially, as that used and known to Pharaoh 90 Industries, marked the labor force. In truth their robots were clunkier and smokier things than the smoother process used by Pharaoh 90 Industries.

The name was familiar, as was the great service done to Chaos by the alien, so there would need to be an embassy.

Much to do, and even with time travel at their disposal, there was need for haste at the one level, and an inexorable destructive power at another. There was always a risk for Chaos in the destructive rifts in spacetime created by its passage.

It could cross through them. So too could other things, in the gaping wounds ripped into spacetime by their passage. That was not a worry yet, but when the things did come, and come they would, its presence might become palpable to more than the Senshi and the Anathema. 

The wound was detected by space telescopes early on, and a quiet agreement between the United States and Russia and other space-faring societies for a joint expedition consisting of US and Russian military presence, and a US-Russian-EU-Japanese scientific group would be mounted on a Russian rocket. It would take weeks to do this, and in those times since the appearance of the wound and the strange aurora, new monsters began to proliferate and stalk the shadows


	29. Time and Time Again

ON THE WAY TO THE TSUKINO HOUSE, AFTER SCHOOL:

It was Mizuno Ami who first encountered the traces of the new enemy, even when none but her noticed the frequent odd glances Usagi kept giving to her youngest sibling. The pink-haired girl was a bit strange,seeming to be more of an adult pretending badly to be a child than a child a lot of the time, and how she knew this she could not parse. There were things that did not quite add up to Mizuno's keen intellect and she was intending to find out about them. Then she felt _it._ Memories flashed of the struggle with the Dark Kingdom and what it had tried to become. A dead empire fallen and incapable of resurrecting nearly the force that had toppled nine planets.

Whatever this was, it wasn't quite a youma.

It stepped out of the shadows, all black and white, an eyeless mouthless face. It was very tall and gangly and it reminded her of the main character in that strange American children's movie. Except that it was not a singing thing from Halloweentown obsessed with Christmas, nor was it quite a robot. It moved with a visceral organic sense, the shadows seemingly shifting in an insectoid fashion, the motion something like a puppet without strings or an object moving like stop-motion.

Her henshin was in her hand immediately and she spoke her words of power:

Mercury planet power make-up!

A blinding flash of light and it was not Mizuno Ami but Sailor Mercury that faced this....thing.

Mizuno, like Aino, suffered at times from having two entities in her heads. There was Ami herself, a girl that hid a very strong set of desires beneath a powerful repression and sense of shame and fear, and overlaid on all of that the intellect she shared with Mercury. Yet Mercury, the soldier, had a keen interest in tactics and strategy and the occult and it was Ami who wanted to be the doctor and the healer. Mercury's mind was inhumanly wise, a mind ancient and awash in power, and it was that mind that gazed at the droid, seeing in its equivalent of a breastplate its obvious weakness. The fogbank came and the droid froze.

Its sensors were off, it could not see, it could not-

Shine Aqua Illusion!

Its sensors were now starting to shriek in alarms and then the Chaos power in it came into raw contact with the purity of Senshi might and in the collision there was nothingness. The fog dispelled with the thought of its creator, as Sailor Mercury watched the droid crumble to ashes. She pursed her lips, then looked around and de-transformed. Nothing else happened.

When she got to the Tsukino house, leaving her shoes outside like a respectable person, she saw Shingo running with Usagi's notes as the princess chased her, and then saw one of those things that did not quite add up with the little girl that was the youngest sister of the Tsukino household. She was watching a race, a race by Tenoh Haruka, in the start of an upswing that would see her in months as Japan's greatest racing star. The girl looked at Haruka strangely, and she could not quite figure out why. She caught a glimpse of a notebook with writing on it and even upside her eyebrow raised as she saw the Kanji for 'Uranus candidates' and her eyes focused on Tenoh Haruka.

She shrugged. Kids were weird, what could she say.

When Naru arrived she put her shoes on the left side of Ami's and shook her head with an amused lipquirk.

She saw Chibiusa writing down something while watching the image of Tenoh Haruka and Kaioh Michiru, heard her make a muttered statement in what wasn't quite Japanese but sounded incandescent, and shrugged it off. That kid was a weirdo, and she had more important things to do. Like going to their mutual friends' room and aiming to kick Mizuno's ass at _The Ruins of Cawdor._ The girl was an annoyingly good strategist and she could not manage to outsmart her, but there was no time like the present.

TSUKINO HOUSE LIVING ROOM:

Small Lady looked at the image of the two women, both high schoolers and yet already the Outer Senshi magic was at work that would make them the extraordinary beings that the Inners, even in her future, took for granted. She knew Kaioh Michiru more than anyone had since the Lost One. It was impossible for that teal-haired beauty in the dress smiling in the crowd by Tenoh Haruka to be anyone else. And there was the man besides Haruka. Neptune never mentioned that, but then the life of the Lost One was a forbidden secret on the personal order of Venus.

She had her answers. Now.....now she had to approach two of the wealthiest women in Japan and try to figure out how to.....

Then the news noted more on the revolutionary new medical treatment from Pharaoh 90 Industries and had an interview with its CEO and founder. The figure was a Gaijin's, bald, with thick red hair and brown eyes. His voice was very deep, almost-no, definitely with an inhuman cadence about it. The voice of something not a man at all trying to be one. She could not speak German, but she had enough Senshi and magic training to notice when a translation was clearly lying, and this one was.

"So that's Lord Pharaoh 90 in the flesh. Huh." 

Writing down the names 'Lord Pharaoh 90' and a garbled rendering of the name 'Irving Christoffels' as 'Yrvin Hisruffels' she went on to go dutifully try to interact with Shingo like a kid. She never could quite pull it off, but that was just it. She was in truth 800 years old and felt every single second of it, all of the bitterness and the frustration that her deepest love had grown up and she could not. And some of that came out in harsh words and instead of a more usual kind of sibling rivalry, when Shingo finally got too annoying she tread firmly on his foot with a glare that did not quite fit the face of who she was pretending to be and he yelped and ran off to his room.

Not long after that her 'mother' and 'father' came home. They didn't look at her or catch the wry amusement.

And not long after that, when Mizuno and Naru left, he came in.

Mamoru Chiba, the King of the Lunar Empire, her _true_ father. The distant Serenity she'd known on her golden throne who sustained herself on magic alone and who was capable of erasing the universe with a thought was not the klutzy game addict she knew in this world. What surprised her given that what remained of her humanity was in her relationship with her father and what passed for their relationship was that her father and mother were not quite dating yet. As far as her parents knew, Chiba Mamoru was a good friend and a potential boyfriend, and yet.....

There was a long and somewhat ugly history of bullying on the part of her father toward her mother, she'd overheard her 'father' saying this in low voices that were not quite polite. That had been a surprise. Her mother who was so stern and unforgiving of her mistakes and that of her as a princess with her own group of four Senshi, well.....her mother had somehow forgiven him and never mentioned it. With these two.....

Her mother came out to meet her father, and she watched the first time she'd seen them together. There was unmistakably something there and two people awkward in fully knowing it. Flashes of Serenity and Endymion, the fallen prince and princess of the Silver Millennium and shades of the Empress and Emperor yet to come. Shingo noticed her stare and thought it was weird but shrugged. Girls were icky and he had more important things to do. Like trying to sneak a piece-

"Don't!" A single word from his mama and he stopped without hesitation.

\--------------

OUTER SENSHI RESIDENCE:

Haruka and Hotaru were out on a 'daddy daughter' day, giving Michiru the perfect cover to meet Sailor V, or Aino Minako. The idea of the precocious child star and musical idol as the hardened Sailor V who'd killed aliens in a fairly brutal manner still jolted, but she remembered that day in the Arctic all too well. Remembered Minako's focus, remembered....it gave Neptune respect for Venus, though Michiru could not find it in her to like or respect the ditzy rock star she could not unsee with Minako.

And yet....it was Minako's clothes and Sailor V's voice sitting on her chair, turning it around so that she sprawled around the back of it, chin on her hands. 

"There is definitely something off about Pharaoh 90 Industries, but I don't think it's the threat we're facing right now."

"Something happened to Haruka there. Something bad."

"I know, Kaioh-san. Believe me." Something in her eyes flashed.

"Whatever that something is, there were reports of Youma attacks there from the days of the Dark Kingdom, I did find that out from looking into it. They tended to cluster around that new school for some reason."

Michiru raised a teal eyebrow.

"Rei tells me that there's nothing to fear from this right now, I asked her."

Michiru gave a level nod, deciding that she'd accept that her fellow seer's visions aligning with her were....there.

"And the new threat?"

"I'm not sure what it is. Whatever it is it doesn't feel quite right, like it's from here."

"Another planet?"

"I don't think so. There was a small pulse of it a few minutes ago."

"Yes, I detected that too." Mihiru took a refined sip of her tea, grateful for the pause in things, part of Neptune surging into her consciousness.

"Did it feel like the things from....from that place?"

"No. Not quite. More like a machine, a thing not quite alive or dead. The....the youma always felt alive. The wrong kind of life, a soulless neverborn life, maybe, but they have a life. Of sorts."

Michiru nodded, conceding that point as well, taking another sip.

"So what do we do, then?"

It was then that Minako showed her an image from one of her first battles.

A being clad in dark black armor wielding a fell katana marked in glowing reddish Kanji, hair of a deep black and eyes matching that darkness. The image was from the front page of a Japanese newspaper, and it showed Venus in a sword lock with the monster. Venus was as always a stern and domineering figure in the eyes of Senshi, and even to this particular writer, but the monster....it was clad in a terrible thing between the armor of a Samurai and a European knight, and the most horrid thing....

"It looks like Haruka."

"Yes it does, but it isn't."

"How?"

"I don't know. Back when the Queen...awoke us all, there were more energy signatures than there are Senshi. None of them quite matched up....right. I remember....more of the Silver Millennium than most-" an image unbidden of how she disciplined her soldiers from back then flashed and the terrified image of Uranus cowering beneath her blade-"but I also remember a forbidden concept taught to me by Pluto. A thing called an Animate. Not really a Senshi or a being, a soulless thing meant to fight and to bleed and to die. She never explained what she meant by 'soulless'. She also mentioned something called the 'Great Enemy.' I don't remember bieng told much about it, or its name. Beyond a word I cannot as yet speak lest it hear.'

Michiru nodded again.

'It called itself Amatsu Mikaboshi.'

Michiru raised an eyebrow.

'An obscure Kami from the oldest Shinto tales. The term literally means 'Dread Star of Heaven.'

Michiru blinked "Was it really the god?"

"I don't think so, but whatever it was, it was enormously strong. The things that killed us in the Arctic were babes in the wood next to it."

"How are you-"

"The Princess didn't bring me back, Kaioh, don't worry. I survived because as terrifyingly strong as this thing was it was very inexperienced with what it had and it seemed like it was just fighting me for the joy of it."

Michiru blinked, then nodded.

"I think this is at least part of whatever that thing hiding behind that face in Pharaoh 90 Industries is....seeking."

Michiru's eyes were impassive and then the impression of something powerful surged for a moment, not Rei's fires that could burn the world to a cinder but an oceanic briny darkness where monsters and dragons lurked in the depths

Something told them that that anger concealed a truth but there was silence there.

DARK KINGDOM INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX, THE FORMER VORKUTA CAMP:

In the shadows the Dark Moon Clan took _her_ factories, where she'd made elements of electronics and all the weapons that had been used there in the Arctic, and more of the soulless Droids began to come online. In a hellish place of cold and misery, suitably, a new army of soulless monsters formed and was prepared, the first waves to face and test the Senshi. Mercury, the weakest, was able to dispatch a droid. A more powerful model would be sent for the next target, Mars.

The Wise Man smiled his approval at his henchmen, who knelt before him as a king, and then placed a great crystal in what had been the commandant's office of the camp. The thing, a relic of the Nemesis that the Wise Man mentioned was his home, pulsed with a terrible energy. Sickly and fundamentally deranging reality around it, it pulsed with the power of Chaos. At times a deep interstellar darkness or the darkness of the deep ocean, at times kaleidoscopic and then at times a deep red with bloodlust, green with the foul stench of decay, silver with the raw anti-smell of magic, and purple with a hue of hedonism, the Black Crystal began to empower its minions.

The Wise Man's smile was cryptic. 

"We shall pursue two plans. Find the Pink Rabbit and her Crystal and destroy it, and her, and with them the future.

Alternately, we shall feed the Crystal with the destruction of each of our soldiers, and then all existence shall know the blessing of the power that lurks at Nemesis's heart."

The Wise Man's eyes flashed with a reptilian fashion briefly and his teeth changed but this was seen as a blessing of Chaos, and the Black Moon Clan, as the Wise Man redubbed his league, would gain from the Crystal's essence.

His eyes turned to the Ayakashi sisters. Four occultists of the old days, each secretly charged with elements of the other faces of Chaos, those gibbering things that lurked beyond in the future and in the past and in the now. None fully aware of this. Part of him relished most when the change would set in Berthier, mistress of ice and snow. Of them all she was kindest and loveliest, and when the Senshi were properly tested against the Droids, he would send against them the Ayakashi sisters to flush out the Outers and grant them an army. Even if the Droids were disposable, he'd seen his empowered sorceresses fight on equal terms against the older fully awakened Senshi. Against their lesser counterparts, even with the Lost One alive and well, no matter.

The Wise Man had formed from the rubble a great throne and hewn it with the power and blessing of Chaos, and he sat upon the throne beneath the light of the Crystal. His eyes gleamed with a corpse-light and a rictus grin formed on his face.

Chaos, in the end, would always win. 

Then a thought occurred to him. If the Lost One proved too troublesome....all that was known was that Lord Pharaoh 90 killed her. How he did, and when he did, that was not known. Perhaps this travel to the past set in that loop. It was another contingency, at any rate.

\---------------

PHARAOH 90 INDUSTRIES, LAB:

_**Hmm....where next? There's nothing left in the United States now. That damned monster escaped before I could kill it. I know it's here, but......I want to wait with them, Yrvin dictated into the Simultech screen in a rambling set of thoughts.** _

_**The Russians had the biggest program, but there are elements of it in Ukraine, one in Moldova, another in Siberia next to what was a camp called....Kolyma, I believe, in the local barbarous tongue.** _

_**China, India, and the European project in Germany. Too many mongrel barbarian tongues these Tamirans. Such squalor pretending to such grandeur and the simplest baubles of Architects technology are as wonders to them.** _

His gauntlet tapped against his chair, and he shrugged, moving over to tubes. He looked at the results of the first experiments and sighed dismissively, his telekinesis shredding the results.

_**The Mk. IV iteration of Daimons remains unsuccessful. These Senshi will look for monsters and I shall give them monsters, but the integration of elements of the Omega Program with the Zarathrustra genome remains as yet improbable.** _

He looked at the nano-tech cleaning up the bloody mess with elements of bone and entrails dispassionately.

_**Soon enough. If not the Mk. V it will be the Mk. VII, and then I shall be able to amass an army of my own.** _

It was then that he froze, his telepathy detecting a small hole carved into existence, the presence of entities from the Tau Nebula seeking to come into this world, and doing so via the rift in space torn by the alien time-rift.

**_Well now, I thought once I'd killed the master that the servants would be gone, too._ **

Among the entities that had slithered in was a thing that sought for a host, sought......and in the desperate solitude of Sailor Iron Hands the animate in her human form....found one. It was her civilian alter ego that closed her eyes.....and it was Mistress Nine that opened them.

The original lord of the Tau Nebula had been destroyed, Yrvin mused.....but then he paused. He'd destroyed the monster. He'd assumed that with the end of the beast so would pass its power. Had he been correct in that assumption? Mistress Nine had tried a human host once before, a generic host without any kind of Senshi power. The attempt had not worked and that, he'd hoped, had been the end of it.

Yrvin pinched his nose. Well, then. More work for him. Perhaps the Senshi would even be grateful.

\--------------

BLACK MOON CITADEL, FORMER VORKUTA CAMP:

The Wise Man looked up when seven entities bathed in the power of Chaos strode toward him, led by a being with long blonde hair and eyes that gleamed with a vast hunger.

**Greetings, Chaos-Lord.**

With that the Witches Five and Kaolinite knelt while Mistress Nine remained standing. 

**Our master, the King of the Tau Nebula is dead. Yet we are servants of Chaos and of its bidding. Servants in all the truest senses of that word.**

**_I regret the passing of....whoever that is, but...._ **

**Lord Pharaoh 90 is no 'whoever', my lord.**

The Wise Man suddenly sat up.

_**Pharaoh 90 is dead?** _

**Yes. Something from Beyond came in and killed him. It was slightly stouter than a man and a foot or two taller than the human average and its mind shattered our master like an egg and it did not seem to stress itself. Yet its power is within me.**

_**Ah. And you are here with me because?** _

**Not because of vengeance, quite, not near so easily as all that. The Tau Nebula is gone, we wish to die, and to die gloriously. You wish the Senshi dead, as we do.**

_**I see.** _

**Yes, I hope you do see. Whatever lurks behind that name may or may not be a foe to the Senshi but it destroyed all else that we have to live for. In the fires of the Earth and of the corpses of the Senshi, we shall help you in your own struggles.**

**_What do you know of my struggles?_ **

**Your energy is strong in the power of death, Lord of Nemesis. That too we serve, in our own fashion.**

The Wise Man steepled his hands and then nodded within his hood.

**_Very well....er...._ **

**Call me Mistress Ninety.**

_**All right, ah....Mistress 90. You have yourself a deal. Vengeance for me, glorious deaths for you.....and in this unity the end of the Senshi.** _

**Good.**

With that Mistress 90 looked out at the droids, and sniffed.

**Weak minions.**

Then she smiled coldly and with a wave of her hand a vast amount of eggs suddenly appeared and the Wise Man's head raised slightly.

**Allow me to aid you and to remedy that.**


	30. 'Neither machine nor man'

HIKAWA SHRINE:

Hino Rei was sweeping the shrine after an active and a successful day at school. Makoto and Usagi were on the way to see her, so she wanted the shrine spotless. It wasn't Senshi business, it was just....friendship, but for Rei, loneliness had been such a prevalent part of her life before that preserving her newly won, or re-won, perhaps, friendship meant that much more. As she swept, she remembered what she'd seen in the fires the night before and then felt it. Three shards of darkness, shards that felt different to the thing that attacked Ami.

Her eyes narrowed and she moved her henshin out from her robe into her hand, quietly placing the broom aside. This was a holy place, monsters were not to be allowed back here. Especially not after the experience of fighting her grandfather as a man possessed by an Oni.

The things had much heavier treads than what Ami mentioned, and it was this that made Rei more cautious as she stepped out. Then she saw them. Not the slender Jack Skellington-like entities, quite, though they had white heads and black bodies. These things were stout and bulky, seeming to bubble and swell with tendrils extending in and out of their back.

"Well you're ugly ones and no mistake," Rei huffed.

The things looked at her, rumbling bestial snarls echoing from their voices. As they leaped to attack Rei shouted her words:

_Mars Planet Power-Make up!_

In a flash of light Sailor Mars stood before them, letting herself levitate into the air. The things did not leap up after her, that was good. Gave her an advantage.

She cast beams of fire from the sky at one of them, striking it. It seemed to corrode into sand at parts and Mars' lip started to quirk, then went back down when the sand became a bubbling reddish thing and shot a tendril at her, before she blasted it to ashes with her flames.

"OK, so you're more than ugly, then."

Her eyes flashed with power as she shouted:

_Burning Mandala!_

The flames that extended outward with the sacred symbol lanced into the monsters, the broken one that extended reddish bubbling substances seeming to simultaneously melt into sand and dissolve into a horrid reddish slush. The others began to dissolve and to burn, but to her surprise they remained intact enough to release those deep rumbling primordial shrieks.

"OK....."

_Mars Flame Sniper!_

A lance of fire struck the second one in the head and it crumbled and melted at the same time, leaving the last of them and the biggest.

"Oh, why is it never the smallest one that's the last one left?" she grumbled, then the creature launched its tendrils, which grasped her by the wrist and hurled her to the ground, smiling as its droid-like form began to extend the turret of a gun, Rei growling and choosing to exert the strength that she had as a Senshi blessing. She was not Jupiter or Uranus, but she did not need to be with a crumbling thing that dripped elements of charred red mush from its body, and she pulled. The thing was hurled across the street into streetlight, which toppled with the impact, and Mars snarled and shouted:

_Mars Flame Sniper!_

Striking this one too in the head, it slumped to the ground with a low tectonic rumble. The reddish mud-like sand turned black and blew away on the wind as Mars looked around, shaking her head.

"Really glad I didn't have to clean that up."

After she de-transformed and finished sweeping up, a breathless Usagi who clutched her wrist and a not at all exhausted Makoto arrived.

"We felt the enemy! Do you need help?" Makoto's enthusiasm was palpable, Usagi's glance around was....worried. Moreso than simple monsters would indicate, though Rei could never quite get the flighty little klutz to answer the question. 

"No, I managed. They did change slightly, though."

"How?"

"Bigger, uglier, and they shoot tentacles."

Usagi sweatdropped. "Oh."

With that Rei smiled. "Come in, relax."

The three were soon enjoying a chance to just catch up and to be people, Rei's view of Usagi softening and her awkwardness around Makoto amused the latter while Usagi raised an eyebrow. Whatever troubled her was something Makoto could no more coax out of her than Rei, and both eventually gave up. Instead they focused on making her laugh, Rei's more refined jokes contrasting with Makoto's earthy puns and soon Usagi was able, for a time, to forget her worries over just what Chibiusa was. She'd shown up the same day as the enemy, and if she had an enemy in her house.......

\------------

PHARAOH 90 INDUSTRIES:

Holding her Silver Crystal to her chest in a broach, Small Lady snuck around the outer edges of the fearsome place that had haunted all the Senshi of her time. Part of her had to know, had to get a glimpse of just what was lurking in that place. She'd found a convenient alley just out of sight of any cameras and then took the crystal, deciding to summon her transformation for the first time.

_Moon Prism Power Make-Up!_

In a blinding flash of light she felt it, felt the power within the Crystal, and was awed. It felt like another self and yet her at the same time, and like part of her that had been bottled up for a very long time was now free.

Sailor Chibi Moon looked out with eyes much older than her appearance.

Then she heard a low and inhuman voice rendered into Japanese by telepathy and even then guttural and rumbling:

_**You don't belong here.** _

With that she whirled around to see a stout figure levitating above her in that alley. His face was dark, a deep dark blackish hue with reddish marks on the face and eyes that were like an animal's in a face crudely akin to that of a man.

"Pharaoh 90," she squeaked.

With that she found herself startled when the briny smell of the ocean and the ozone-like presence of Venus suddenly swooped down into the alley by her, both glaring at the hovering alien. 

_**More visitors, mm?** _

With that the alien then turned to them all and smiled, and told them:

_**I have other business to attend to, it is not yet my time to face you directly.** _

And with that an assertion of psychic will powerful enough to give Michiru a nosebleed and the other Senshi splitting headaches led to them all being hurled from the alley against a bulilding that rocked with the impact, the telepathic response that followed leaving them wondering not only why they'd come back to this place again but who the little Senshi with the pink hair beside them was. 

Venus looked down at her with a strange set of emotions, then her eyes closed on the crystal in Chibi Moon's broach. Her eyes narrowed and Chibi Moon formed a very sickly smile on her face.

"Well....bye!" With that she found herself flying up, empowered by the crystal to outpace Venus and Neptune, both of whom swore as she escaped them.

Venus looked at Neptune.

"So, not one but three entities attacking the shrine, now a pink-haired Senshi with the Silver Crystal? Who isn't Sailor Moon?"

Neptune nodded.

"We need to do something about this."

With that they flew away, deciding to go to the Hikawa Shrine.

\----------------

A FEW MILES AWAY:

Sailor Chibi Moon flew down, detransforming and relaxing against a wall, wiping her head with a satisfied "Whew."

She did not realize she was right against the Outers Residence until she heard a very familiar voice saying:"Who are you and why are you hiding next to our front door?" 

She blinked, turned. 

The person who looked at her was not the woman of her time whom she loved dearly, but someone who looked nearly her own age. Both the violet eyes and the sense of tremendous power and force within her that was contained easily enough in the kindliest of all the Senshi led to her heart aching for her own time and fear for her own Saturn.

"I'm.....Tsukino Chibiusa. Usagi's youngest sister. You?" 

"Tenoh Hotaru."

"You look exhausted and scared, what's wrong?"

Chibiusa gave a nervous warbling laugh.

"Oh nothing, nothing. Just.....ran a long way and wanted to take a break."

Hotaru raised an eyebrow.

"Would you like to come in and have some tea?"

Chibiusa beamed, and went in, enjoying her tea and listening to the young Hotaru rambling on about a great many things with a careful refusal to slip into a smile that would have caught her eye. Some things were consistent in the past and even in her own future.

An hour and a half later, the door opened and Hotaru beamed and ran up to hug a tall blonde woman in a racing suit, who tossed her school-bag to the side with a casual flick of the wrist. Haruka then saw Chibiusa and raised an eyebrow, still moreso when Chibiusa's eyes went very, very wide. It was her first time to see the Tenoh Haruka that was a myth in her own time underlaid with sorrow and bitterness. She'd expected a giant who commanded howling gales with the flick of a finger. She saw a butch woman who looked at her curiously, then shrugged and went to raid the fridge for a snack before getting a gaming console and relaxing on the couch, munching cookies. 

The impact seemed rather underwhelming and it was a sign of her delayed maturity (and something the later Small Lady would admit to regretting) that her view of the reality instead of the legend led to a set of mixed emotions that were overwhelmingly strong and which she couldn't quite place. Not that it mattered. She hung out with Hotaru for a bit more, then smiled as she decided, now that she'd taken her Silver Crystal and tapped into some of its powers, to see if even in her untransformed state she could fly. With a shout of joy she found that she could and flew above Tokyo as afternoon turned to twilight and the red rays of dusk traversed the sky and clouds became brilliant crimson and black shades, deeply grateful for the blessings that came with Senshi, with the crystal, with all of the aspects of her life.

She landed that evening, an hour before Usagi returned from visiting her 'friend at the Hikawa Shrine.' Shingo missed her return flight and she amused herself letting that childish part of her get into a domestic routine that passed for her like a means of just...defusing. Encountering something at Pharaoh 90's Citadel and the Lost One in the flesh was enough for the day. Doing that on the day she'd first transformed after 800 years of failure, well......

\----------------

BLACK MOON CLAN BASE:

The Black Crystal pulsed and seemed to have still greater power within its pulses.

Mistress 90 looked at it carefully, then turned to the Wise Man.

**You were right, that does feed this thing. Every victory the Senshi win serves your interest, then.**

The Wise Man smiled.

**Indeed so. Is that not a worthy cause for the death you and your Tau-kindred seek? A holy death in the service of Chaos?**

_**Yes. Vengeance for our master and the ruin of the Senshi, two birds, one stone. That pulse of the Silver Crystal by the Usurper's realm.....** _

**It was not that of Sailor Moon's.**

Mistress 90 turned to him.

_**So the Rabbit reveals herself, then?** _

**Yes.**

**We have more Senshi to test, all the same. We faced the Senshi a thousand years distant and with all my power they held off my men and women as equals and my armies as nothing. I made it to the throne and the little rabbit defied me.**

He snarled.

**I must know how powerful each of the Senshi of this time are. And we must find out about the strength of the Lost One.**

**_And the Mikaboshi?_ **

**Mika-what-ee?**

**_Mikaboshi. A Dark Senshi, resident in Osaka._ **

The Wise Man's eyes remained hidden but his gaze focused on her carefully.

Dark Senshi? How?

**_I do not know. She is a Senshi who draws power from that which unites us._ **

The Wise Man's hand disappeared in his hood as he tapped what seemed to be vaguely akin to a chin and yet was clearly not.

**Very well, when we send the next three for Jupiter, send six for the Mikaboshi.**

Mistress 90 smiled. Yes, it would be fascinating to see how her fellow product of Zarathrustra held up to _that._


	31. Hate is as old as time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Senshi are drawn into new conflicts with the enemy. Usagi and Mamoru go to the amusement park, and Yrvin Heshatani gets a visit from the ghosts of the Tau Nebula.

OSAKA:

When they came for her, the Mikaboshi was ready and waiting for them. She'd put too much into her apartment to want to see it wrecked, so she lured them to a park within the central portion of Osaka. Night had fallen, making it perfect for her purposes. There were five of them, things that would otherwise have been insultingly easy to destroy. Now....black eyes that drank in the darkness around them gleamed with an unhallowed witch-light, and fanged teeth drew into a smile. Now there was much more ease. She'd waited for orders, or some impression of something from the thing that had taken her and given her a soul and not the emptiness that had been her lot.

Now she realized that it was foolish to wait. Chaos was her due, and her power, and her glory.

Clad in dark armor that like her eyes drank into itself the shadows, she drew a new blade that in a trance and in a mystic state she had 'forged' by mystic means. Not the scimitar-like thing that was her 'good' counterpart's talisman nor her older blade, nor the Souldrinkers of old, this was more of a Zweihander, modified to gleam with Chaos-runes that reflected both the form of Chaos that sought the Senshi and those things from her future. Runes that gleamed with the image of a skull throne were most prominent, and a rune that looked like a fly. Hers the blessing to call upon multiple of the Ruinous Powers, though everything had its price.

Her sword glowed with reddish and green light that interwove and made it seem almost a glowstick, an impression ludicrous at first to the five droids, who all made guttural rasping chuckles.

The Black Moon Clan sends you their regards, spoke the leader and the largest, and it directed its fellows to move.

 ** _In the shape of darkness I did bind demons and evil doers into the shape of wolves_** , spoke the Mikaboshi.

Then empowered with Chaos and the element of the Dark Wind, she _blurred_. Too fast for the Droids and the Daemons to see, the Daemons having no context for Senshi-like power of this sort and the Droids having no context likewise for a Wind magic of any sort, the sword lanced out. One by one the daimon-droids fell, hewn in two to five pieces, the demons trying to lance outward only for the green power to prevail over the redddish and the slices to cause them to bubble and decay and whimper in the awareness of what a slow and lingering death they were given.

_**So perish all who stand against me.** _

Immediately the Mikaboshi grasped the purpose of each Mortis-pulse, and snarled:

 _ **No. I am not your battery,**_ then drank the mortis-pulses into the blade, deciding the method of the DD Girls was worth emulation and improvement. Hallowed by the offering, the blade's hunger had her gasping in delight, extending her tongue to the flat of the blade to lick the ichor with a positive glee, before watching the blade self-clean and drink the rest of the offering, gleaming with a splendid power. Placing it within her scabbard, the Mikaboshi paused. If she was not going to hide anymore, she had a score to settle with Sailor V. Then she'd awaited to see if there would be orders, and yet orders there had not been. V had an impression, no doubt, of her power and her prowess.

With a fanged grin that gleamed in the darkness the Mikaboshi teleported to Tokyo. She would find V, and lure her into strife.

As she arrived, she paused. There were clouds gathering in between Juuban Middle School and the Arcade, and something in her awakened by the power of the blade ached to see the combat, if not to be a part of it.

EN ROUTE TO THE ARCADE:

Kino Makoto, among the Senshi, relished most the return of her powers. Hers the thunder and the lightning, hers the power to fly, and the greatest strength of them all. Uranus was a more effective head-on fighter because the wind enhanced her speed, and the durability for the friction and all else in motion not to burn her body in fire made her seem stronger than she was. Makoto knew without hesitation that even absent her transformation she was tremendously strong, she'd tested. Old trains in a train-yard she'd found had been juggled with ease, and that absent her transformation. That made her much more cautious about who she was, and what she was with it.

She and her friends were gathered together again, and this time she vowed no matter what she would not want her memory wiped. It.....it was a lonely life without everything else with her, and for her.

She'd known that Mercury and Mars had been attacked, and that this meant she would be next. As luck would have it, the rumors of monsters skulking around and the remembrance of prior confrontations meant when the three things showed up, she was alone. Well, her and three things that looked like black and white robots to one degree, except immensely stout and bulky, seeming to bubble and pulse with energy.

As the stormclouds gathered, the thunder knowing its mistress, she spoke her words of power, transforming. A sudden presence that was strangely simultaneously vaguely familiar and laden with menace appeared on a roof. She could not afford to investigate it now. Now.....Sailor Jupiter raised herself into the sky, staring at the three Daimon-Droids.

 **Jupiter.....** the voices spoke in a roiling mockery of humanity. **You....die....now.**

She smiled, her eyes lit with lighting, her voice like the thunder that was her birthright:

_I don't think so. Jupiter Thunderbolt!_

For a moment the Daimon-Droids saw a spectral image of the vast bulk of the planet Jupiter over her, the great storm that whirled around it prominent. The ozone element in the air intensified, as did the smell of a thunderstorm, and power crackled from the image which seemed to shrink from a three dimensional bulky thing to a massive amount of lighting in her tiara, then spreading to her hands, which Jupiter raised over her head. It was a process that took less than a picosecond from saying the attack to summoning its power, and then the bolt surged out.

The Mikaboshi was deeply impressed, awed, and even more than slightly terrified. V was dangerous as she was empowered with that damned healing and with a strategists' brain. Jupiter, mistress of Thunder? Chaos was her strength but for the first time the Mikaboshi looked on the Senshi not just with respect but an element of fear and willed herself to teleport away, deciding to try to rethink things. Jupiter looked over and around, trying to decipher what that other malevolent pulse was, then shrugging.

De-transforming and becoming Kino Makoto again, she stood by the arcade, beaming when Ami showed up and nodding respectfully to Usagi and Rei, Minako not there with them. Nothing here that a good bit of gaming wouldn't cure.

She smiled softly when she saw Motoki, who blushed and smiled back. That evening was wonderful, the loneliness in her life receding. Then the evil that they'd felt suddenly changed the game twice. The earlier had been before they came to face her, and it was....she froze for a moment, though muscle memory meant she didn't miss a combination in her game, much to Rei's annoyance. It was the exact energy she'd felt on the rooftop watching her, the kind that had elements of what Sailor V had mentioned with the thing she called the 'False Senshi' that attacked her. The second was that night when they were all heading to bed. It was not Senshi nor Chaos, and the sheer raw _power_ of the psychic pressure all the same was something that had them all sleepless.

Something dangerous was in Tokyo. It would have to be dealt with. First the new face of the Old Enemy, then this.

OUTER SENSHI RESIDENCE:

Kaioh Michiru relaxed, or tried to relax, doing her homework while helping her new daughter with hers. As if dating Kenji and flaunting him, flaunting her rejection of her wasn't enough, Haruka now insisted on having the bastard around the house. Michiru never _smelled_ sex, nor had any of her visions, many of which were frankly erotic in ways that awed and amazed her, ever shown more than kissing, than a kind of tenderness and a kind of desperation. None of this mattered. Kaioh Michiru hated Kenji for getting to touch Haruka at all, for stealing her first kiss. 

And she hated him most for seeing visions of other deaths ahead and this one and what it would mean for Haruka, and that when and as their relationship truly began....

Her pencil snapped from the pressure she put on it, and she swore silently and went to sharpen it.

Hotaru saw her and never said a word, though she caught a glimpse of understanding that was more Saturn than Hotaru and couldn't quite resist the shiver of fear that greeted her. Memories of the old days were prominent with her, and while she knew this wasn't that world (not that the old Sailor Uranus hadn't had the one male dalliance either, nor been content to have it, though it was only ever the one) there were elements not of Neptune, who understood with a wistful bittersweetness that where she only loved women, Haruka was different, but of Kaioh Michiru.

Before her parents had died at the hands of the monstrosities that had stalked the night and killed them, she had never been denied anything she wanted, as soon as she wanted it. Tenoh Haruka was something she wanted more than anything else, and she was denied to her, and there was nothing she could do about it, for now.

Shrugging, she returned to her math, her finished Japanese and history homework done on the side.

TENOH HARUKA'S ROOM:

Haruka smiled at Kenji, who relaxed on her bed with her. Kenji knew Haruka preferred women over men and understood that easily enough. He was still blown away that so prominently male-seeming a woman (at least for now in her racing career) was as comfortable with him as she was. He'd grown past the initial tendency to provoke Kaioh Michiru when whatever had happened at that strange business had happened. He did not have the power nor close to it to undo Lord Pharaoh 90's mind-wipe but then he did not need to. Whatever had altered his memory had not factored in that his targets had been in the range of a security camera, nor that Kenji had a father who had the connections to check those cameras.

Kenji had seen Lord Pharaoh 90 reveal himself much more than a man a few times. Some kind of cosmic horror pretending and doing only a partially good job of it to be a human was in plain sight in Tokyo. His girlfriend was in its crosshairs....and she was one of the Sailor Senshi. And after that talk, after telling Haruka what he'd seen and what he knew....now here they were. Holding each other on a bed, sitting in a kind of lotus position, as Kenji trembled, more than slightly.

"You risk your life every day for Tokyo, don't you?"

Haruka smiled.

"Well, not every day. It depends. Sometimes the other Senshi are more than able to handle things. Sometimes.....sometimes we have to."

"So if you're Uranus then....."

"Then Michiru is Neptune, Hotaru is Saturn."

"What about Pluto?"

"I......I don't know. I don't remember if there is a Sailor Pluto or not."

Haruka shrugged, more casually than it seemed.

Kenji mused for a moment. "You said you have memories that Uranus and Neptune were...."

"Were lovers, from time to time. Not in love, just....a way to be human. For the weapons to feel like the human beings they were born as before the long and lonely times in those castles."

Kenji looked at her and the sad look in her eyes, and put his hand on her shoulder.

"If you love Kaioh, I'll get out of the way."

Haruka's eyes turned to him and they flashed.

"I do love her...." Kenji stiffened and then sagged, but she continued "and I cannot be sure what of that is Tenoh Haruka and what of that is the superhuman that always sees what I see and does what I do. Kaioh Michiru deserves more love than the memories of a dead lifetime can give her. And if I can't be sure I love her for Tenoh Haruka and not Sailor Uranus....I won't hurt her in that way."

Kenji paused. "So what does this leave me?"

"You......" Haruka pulled back a bit and steepled her fingers for a moment. "You are my boyfriend, and I love you. I don't.....I don't want to go there..."

Kenji nodded with a sharp spasm of relief, laughing in a shaky sense.

"Oh, good. I don't either, not quite yet. Not for a while."

She looked at him carefully.

"If I get too close to you, for now, whatever you fight might find a way to exploit that. And I wouldn't be able to forgive myself if I, or you, or the other two, got harmed because of..." he waved his hand lazily. "All this."

Haruka smiled. "Good."

With that, the two hugged again and stepped out, hand in hand.

Kaioh looked at both of them and at Kenji with a mask that could not quite disguise her emotions nor how clearly she felt them, but Kenji himself had changed, and made a point to leave tapes on the couch, stepping out after giving Haruka a quick kiss.

Kaioh looked at them in genuine curiosity. "I'll explain later, after Hotaru's in bed."

That evening, Haruka did show Michiru exactly what Kenji showed her, and with a sudden horrible realization Michiru realized _exactly_ what the monster that kept showing up in her visions was, and was unable to hide the mixture of deep sorrow and fear. Filled with both and the sudden worry that given the monster had already abducted Haruka once and nobody had seen anything wrong with it that if she didn't express things fully Haruka might slip out of her hands, she grabbed Haruka suddenly and pulled the other woman into a deep kiss, Haruka at first stunned and then timidly returning the kiss, giving Michiru a deep and abiding sense of warmth at even that much.

Then they broke it and Haruka looked at her with a thousand different emotions warring in her face. None of them quite won and she said softly and with a deep sense of sadness "I.....I can't. Not like this. Not fair to you."

She muttered a bit more that made Michiru's eyes go very wide when she heard those words: "I know Uranus loves you, I don't know if i do, and you need me, not just her" and then Haruka, still muttering and doing so just outside Michiru's range of hearing strode out.

With the image of a creature of charcoal grey and deep reddish orange with yellow animal-eyes and armor like a flayed hide that suspended the Senshi-forms of herself and Venus frozen in a pause on the TV there, she remained in the darkness, the monster caught on the tapes illuminated in terrible form.

Then she felt the newest pulse, not those that were testing each of the Senshi in turn (she had no fear for herself or Hotaru in this, nor for the other Senshi, not after the battle near D-Point), It was not near where a Senshi was, it was not like the droids, entirely, though elements of what had suddenly changed in them were very powerful. And it was there, in the dragon's lair. And then that power that had been on those tapes surged out again and all the Senshi felt it. Michiru's fear became still more present, and she found herself wishing to just go into the bed and cuddle Haruka, fearful that one day she'd wake up and it'd be as though she never was. That evening, knowing it would not be the best idea, perhaps, she slipped into the bed and cuddled her, her fears and sorrows reaching Haruka like the sea that longed for the wind.

Haruka, briefly awoken, said and did nothing, deeming that Michiru needed this, and at some level, part of her longed for it, as long as it was her. Was Haruka. Not the immortal super-soldier.

PHARAOH 90 INDUSTRIES:

Content that his experiments were starting to bear fruit, Yrvin Heshatani was relaxing in his apartment within his office building, drinking a potent drink of his homeworld. Merelstuvi was a drink of many facets, some intoxicating, others not. This particular variant was akin to the hardest of hard drinks on the human world, and it had a nice spicy flavor that made him content, celebrating that he'd done it. He'd cracked just enough of his father's work that he'd shown that even if the full thing could not be given, enough of it could be.

Then he felt the presence of that same energy that had scythed through the time-rift. The energy of the thing he'd encountered in the Tau Nebula, the pseudo-planet that pulsed and bubbled with a thousand eyes and mouths and shrieked in a continuous low rumbling moan. Destroying it had ended most of the life there, but clearly not all.

With a thought his nano-tech wrist-band was on his wrist and his flayed-hide armor flowed around his body. Idly enjoying the kind of image it would send, he formed an black cape out of nano-weave as well, and stood up. The thing was in his laboratory, evidently expecting him there from whatever intelligence gave it intimations of prior encounters. The lab, two floors down, suddenly seemed to pulse and a ray shot up through both of the floors, as a flower-like creature with spider-like limbs and a single long stamen that formed its face hovered.

 _You slew our master,_ it spoke in an anti-voice that was more thoughts of malice and hate and envy wrought into a pseudo-speech. A trick to disorient Senshi and mortals of this reality. For Yrvin who'd faced the multiversal horrors that made these monsters seem as child's play and survived, and his father's great work that he'd only grasped tiny edges of and survived not one but multiple encounters with likewise, it was a cheap parlor trick and his disdain registered and made the creature hiss.

 _ **I slew your master**_ , Yrvin spoke in a telepathic communication in the perfect language of the deceased entities of the Tau Nebula. _**Crushed him like an elephant would an egg. He was and is greater than all of you, and now you come here. For what. to die?** _

_Yes, to die_ , hissed Germatoid. _We are all that's left, the last creatures of a dying race. Death is all that's left for us._

_**I've met Death in her armor before. I am one of a tiny few entities not of her ilk to be able to tell the tale there. If she's all that's left for you, you're fine off indeed and should be grateful.** _

Germatoid hissed again. _You slew the real Pharaoh 90 and left us only glorious death. We shall at least serve Chaos a new way and our deaths shall nourish the Black Crystal, and the Wise Man shall be our vengeance, our spear against you, and against the Senshi._

_**The Senshi? Whatever have they done to you?** _

_They exist. Their power, their hope, it offends ussss._

_**Ah, I see.** _

With that Germatoid caught a fuller glimpse of the thing that slew their master. He seemed a stout thing built far bulkier than was possible for a true man, his skin much, much darker than any human's and his eyes glowing yellow animal-eyes.

_**There's just one problem for you, Tauan. I killed your master to assimilate into this world, and I don't care a damn for your grievances, nor your suicide cult. You came here to tell me something to the effect of 'The Tau Nebula sends its regards?'** _

_No, alien. I came here to have the satisfaction of making you bleed and seeing what slew our master with my own eyes. Mistress Ninety shall have her vengeance!_

_**Well, now you've seen me.** _

With that Yrvin's eyes seemed to flash much more brightly and Germatoid found himself gripped with a telekinetic pressure so powerful every atom of his body seemed frozen in position.

_**You won't make me bleed though, creature. Only one thing in this existence I've found can do that thus far, the Chaos you serve. And it took Chaos bailing out its chosen servant to ensure it survived that fight.** _

The pressure increased and Germatoid suddenly felt a powerful sense of fear. The creature's voice had changed, taking on a rough glee and bloodlust that was overpowering in its sheer weight.

_**Your master was the equivalent of a small star, a neutron star in size. The apex of my power is sufficient to make the smaller and just larger scale stars accelerate from main sequence to death in hours.** _

The glee of the false Pharaoh 90 was smothering, his grin splitting his face from ear to ear.

_**So your master was nothing at all to me, and now you shall die, alone and forgotten, your quest availing you nothing.** _

Then Yrvin increased the power to that which would have shattered a planet with a mere thought. Germatoid did not have the time to scream before crumbling into a horrid pile of goo, as Yrvin sniffed. Nano-machines swarmed out and began to release localized disintegration-energy sparks that erased the puddle, and other, more banal things to restore his carpet.

**_Pathetic._ **

He then went back to his chambers, satisfied to double-check after the thing was in his laboratory that the newest mark of Daemons had not been tampered with. Tomorrow they would all be destroyed and replaced with the next mark, and soon he would have his army. Beings that could divert rivers, with skin that could survive nuclear explosions unscathed. Shapeshifters. The facets of power he could extend to that point. If he could grasp how to marry psionic power to an artificially coded brain....

He snorted. That would come soon enough, and then it would be a waiting game. Let the Senshi face whatever crawled out of time to kill them, remove the last of the abominations, and then finish the job with that one that had given him the samples and the abilities to gauge the kind of threats he'd face. After the next round of experiments....something occurred to him. The other monster that had escaped Nevada had felt empty like the thing that now called itself the Mikaboshi, itself eventually on his to be destroyed list. 

Then its mental presence had changed. Something that had crept in through the hole in reality had overtaken it and replaced it.

 _ **Ah,**_ he mused. Mistress Ninety. **_Who precisely lurks behind that name?_ **

He left a note for himself on his communication device. He would send a probe to seek that energy and to find 'Mistress Ninety.' To find her, and if necessary...to bring the end of the monster and have the satisfaction of being sure he finished the job he started and finished it right.

BLACK MOON CLAN BASE:

The Wise Man's face was impassive as he looked at his servants. The entities that fought Jupiter had fed the crystal. The entity that fought 'Lord Pharaoh 90' had likewise fed it. The ones that fought the Mikaboshi had not. That troubled him, more than he was willing to admit. Somehow she'd literally drank down the souls of her enemies, and denied the Crystal its food.

He spoke to Mistress Ninety:

**A change of plans. If the Mikaboshi could stop the crystal's feed, we must see if Sailor Uranus also has that power or if it's something of our mutual lord-in-strife.**

Mistress Ninety looked at him coldly.

_**So what do we send against her, then?** _

Their gaze turned to Kaolinite, whose gaze met theirs levelly.

Mistress 90 spoke to her:

_**Kaolinite, the time of your redemption is at hand. Find Sailor Uranus. Test her power.** _

Kaolinite smiled, coldly and sadly at the same time.

**May my death be glorious and serve the cause!**

The Wise Man remained cautious. The Senshi's true power was holiness against Evil, and the power of the Wind and the World-Shaking was an unknown. His Daimon-Droids and his servants were aware of how to fight all of the Senshi and had done lengthy training to do so. Uranus? As with the Rabbit, she was a wild card. 


	32. The Wind, the Golden Queen, and the Quest for the Rabbit:

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As the plans of the Black Moon Clan accelerate, the Mikaboshi seeks out Sailor V for a rematch, Sailor Uranus has her first contact with the Enemy, and the Golden Queen lays low another world and recruits her second set of Animates.

NESHANNU:

The Golden Queen's starship had introduced itself to this peaceful world and its moon by a casual set of orbital strikes that lanced through its skies like fire from Heaven. Cities burned in utter incomprehension as pillars of what seemed like fire but was worse rained down, erased as though they had never been. The major cities of the Moon were obliterated in a set of secondary strikes, leading its Senshi to teleport down to the world with the Senshi of the world, and the monarch of their system at the same time. The orbital strikes continued for an hour, a long and terrifying prelude to the destruction that followed....and then the oppressive stillness that followed their sudden silencing left the inhabitants of Neshannu to hold each other in fear.

A girl descended, wearing a seeming Stola of solid gold with hair that began gold and became blood-hued, casually relishing the scene that her falling from heaven in yet another ball of flame left. The impact hurled dust into the sky and left a crater to add to that made by her bombardment, the reeking odor of burned metal and flesh and blood like a potent draught. Even with her armor starting to display small streaks of the very darkest black, Galaxia chose to overlook this. Worlds had burned to her before, galaxies scoured clean of their Senshi and yet still, still she had not found one worthy of her power.

Two Senshi stood before her, one of dark brown skin with reddish hair, the other a pale, supremely so, hue with light aqua hair.

Galaxia snorted, her voice overladen with the dual-voiced power of Chaos itself:

_**Pathetic. All that destruction and a mere two Senshi.** _

With that she powered up and the transformation rocked the crater further, deepening it to the point that beneath her hovering the planet bled magma. She drew her sword and gave the Senshi mocking salutes, and lunged at them with a speed that neither of them was able to counter. Her sword struck the aqua-haired maiden clean through, drawing out her star-seed. Galaxia smiled and teleported it to her flagship even as the other made an anguished wail, Galaxia turning to her and with contempt not only wiping clean her sword with the other Senshi's fuku, but sheathing it. 

Holding out two fingers she fired a blast that impaled the other Senshi, leaving her Star-Seed too to rise from her corpse, Galaxia teleporting it away to her growing collection of same. Moving her hand, she teleported the new bracelets she'd tested on Sailor Iron Mouse to the next two, more than satisfied when their corpses rose with glassy eyes and knelt before her.

_**Sailor Lead Crow, Sailor Aluminum Siren, welcome to the Shadow Galactica.** _

**Hail to the Golden Queen,** they spoke in robotic unity.

With that Galaxia and her new Animates teleported away. Beneath them the world without its Senshi turned, entire portions of continents blackened and craters dotting its moon and the planet itself like great blemishes, and the flagship teleported away.

On her golden throne Galaxia sat with her fingertips steepled, and in her mind she drew a sword to confront the titanic image of Chaos, seeking ever to break it and its hold upon her. She knew entirely what she was becoming, what she was being made to do. She vowed then that the very moment she found the entity in her visions, the winged being whose purity stood by proof of her nudity, that she would find a way to either be cleansed by that entity, or to use her to manipulate Chaos out of her and to slay Chaos itself. With a room three doors down gleaming with the severed star seeds and another holding her growing collection of Animates, those Senshi deemed powerful enough to resurrect as opposed to merely dispose of for weakness, she remained the only person active on her flagship.

Behind her, a galaxy's growing collection of dead and dying worlds. Before her, a galaxy to burn and bleed.

TOKYO WATERFRONT:

Michiru wanted Hotaru to learn how to swim and to have some mother-daughter time, so they were out swimming. Haruka.......was skipping stones on the beach, enjoying the feeling of the wind and the sea and their unity, her power over the wind subtly tested by increasing the choppiness of Tokyo Bay. It was a challenge for the Outers to wait on the plan that Venus had imposed, it felt like defiance of their mission. But....between them, Mercury and Venus had shown an understanding of the enemy's tactics that justified the wait. First Mercury herself, then Mars, then Jupiter. No doubt Venus herself next, then Hotaru, Haruka herself, and finally Michiru. At least that was the expectation.

She knew the strange girl with the pink odangoes was following her, had been following her for a while. She did not know why. None of her instincts, human nor Senshi, detected a threat from her, instead a strange mixture of bemusement, protectiveness, and an engrained obedience of the kind she felt around Venus and the Princess in Senshi mode. So when the girl was looking from behind the shingle of the beach, she made no response to that except to skip more stones. Kenji was out with his friends and she didn't regret the alone time. Kissing Michiru left her feeling guilty, like she was betraying Michiru and Kenji both and those feelings were......the escalation of the wind spoke for her when her jumbled emotions in her mind could not make a decision.

Then the ocean stilled and a more breezy day than usual became still and quiet, a change that meteorologists noted but could not account for.

She felt her then, a powerful and malignant presence that had teleported onto the beach shingle, and in a single motion whirled around, drawing her henshin and spoke her transformation phrases, a flash of light following and leaving Sailor Uranus to face a red-haired 'woman' in a red dress.

Kaolinite looked at her curiously.

 _How.....fascinating...._ she purred. _You have more than a pure heart, I think, but it matters not. Your heart is mine!_

Her hair moved out only for the Senshi to _blur_ with a speed that awed her, faster even than Mistress 90 could be. Her hair struck thin air and drew back only for a kick to her side to send her sprawling and flailing to the beach shingle. Kaolinite snarled in a guttural rumbling sound, hurling wind at the Senshi's eyes to blind her, the Senshi easily moving around again and drawing on her power for her attack. Kaolinite's eyes widened as she felt the sheer raw power of that attack, her breath stolen from her by the Senshi of the wind drawing together that power with her, and for her, as glowing energy drew around her into a gleaming golden planet that mirrored the orbit of Uranus.

_World shaking!_

In a singular blast of that power, Kaolinite roared in agony, her humanoid guise sundered. From it rose a towering bloated thing like a great red worm, fanged with eight glowing black eyes that sparked with lines of white lightning from what would have been the pupil of a normal eye. The monster shrieked and moved with a speed just shy of equal to Uranus's own and collided with her, knocking her back, only for Uranus to grasp something for the first time. In her hands shone a brilliant scimitar-like sword, something she grasped instinctively and wielded with a second shout and still more power drawn into it. 

_Space sword blaster!_

In a single blinding flash of light Kaolinite withered away into nothing, her essence devoured by the Black Crystal in the Vorkuta base as the Wise Man's eyes widened. He understood, then, that for all the power blessed for him by Chaos that if Uranus had been there, the Senshi complete, that he would have had to have relied on Chaos far more totally than he did and risked much more or he would have never even made planetfall, let alone gone to that palace. The worst part was that all the other Senshi were known quantities and known dangers.

Uranus......

Where Sailor Uranus stood, holding her talisman before her, was only a small blackened area, the singular trace of Kaolinite. Looking around cautiously, she put the sword at her side before feeling a second and much more ominous pulse of energy. One that was vaguely and horrifyingly akin to her own, and close to her.

"Venus," she gasped. Teleporting away, she missed that the pink-haired child drew a strangely familiar crystal from her and spoke a word of transformation herself and likewise teleported to follow her. 

BANKS OF THE EDO RIVER:

Aino Minako had spent a normal enough day at school, fortunately. She was not yet truly allied with the new Senshi bar the formal collective meetings and had no real desire to be. She was their general, not their friend. She was an idol and the younger Senshi were fans of hers and the Outer Senshi were growing musical phenomena in their own rights and she viewed them as....she was not sure what to view them as yet. She'd worked with them, Uranus and Neptune helping her to take down the strange alien in armor earlier. Neptune, not yet wielding her talisman naturally, had agreed with her on the nature of a couple of threats, though Neptune had wanted to take their daughter on a family outing. All to the good, the girl was potentially the most powerful Senshi of the Earth after the Princess, and there was no sense in exposing her to the potential harm here.

The Dark Senshi she had faced, the monster clad in black armor, it had been the one attacked not that long ago in Osaka. It had displayed much more power there than she expected, and she'd had a feeling.....

That sickly sensation like oil on water hung in the air, the water of the Edo River partially frosting over and she smiled. In a flash of light Aino Minako was gone and Sailor V stood there, mask, sword, and all. 

Before her stood the Dark Senshi, the so-called August Darkling Star with her raven hair and deep black eyes, equally black armor and a sword horribly akin to that which had killed her in the Arctic in her hand.

 _ **Sailor V....**_ the monster spoke in a voice like a distorted mirror of Sailor Uranus's. She could not explain this abomination's existence but she was sure beyond any reasonable doubt that it and whatever thing lurked in the heart of Pharaoh 90 Industries had a connection. _**You humiliated me when last we fought. I was weak, then, waiting for orders that are not going to arrive. No more waiting.**_

The thing snarled, recognizing the trap, and drew back, now the one on the defensive again. Their swords sparked, light against darkness, Healing against Chaos, Creation against Entropy. The local mirrors of the greater cycle, the first shadow of the greater foes to come. Even with the fullest power at her disposal, against the general and commander of all the Senshi, the raw brute force of the Mikaboshi met stalemate. Met it, and doubled strength by calling upon the power of Chaos and the runes of the Ruinous Powers...and still stalemate, for healing negated altogether the power of the Lord of Decay and Peace sapped the power of the Blood God. 

Two presences pulsed, one wielding....her eyes widened and with a casual gust of the Dark Wind summoned to her she bashed Venus back enough to turn in a defensive posture. One wielded nothing less than a variant of the Silver Crystal. She appeared in a smaller Sailor Fuku, but where this one with the pink hair seemed a child in appearance, she was eight hundred years old. Her power reflected enormous strength and only hampered by complete lack of grasp of what she had and what she could do.

The other.....the other was Her. The Souled One, the ultimate success of Project Zarathrustra.

The Senshi of the Wind.

Her talisman shone as a scimitar of light against her great Sword of the Outer Dark, a sword that gleamed with a new sigil, a circle within a tongue of fire. The power of the Changer of Ways now amplifying that of the other two, the Architect of Fate. With that power, and its enhancement, she felt a blessing from three of the Four Ruinous Powers, the new patrons and the other facet of Chaos surging through her. Her voice deepened an octave as she moved her sword in a mocking salute of the mistress of the Winds.

_**Uranus......** _

"What kind of monster are you?"

_**Don't you recognize me, sister? Are we not products of the same great process? We are the children of Zarathrustra, we teach humanity the superman, that madness, that frenzy!** _

Uranus snarled.

"I don't know what Zarathrustra is, but you, monster, are nothing like me. And I have no family."

_**Nonsense, sister. The old Uranus and Neptune were but weapons, souls of planets made to lay low galaxies, the Silver Millennium's great warlords. Now you and I and another like us have become this anew. Weapons of human origin, the feeble sons of Earth meddling with the works of their betters. Not content to heed the words of the false prophet, now they have made Gods! We, us, the Gods of Annihilation!** _

"Lunatic," and with that Uranus blurred with a speed that to the Mikaboshi's shock was greater than her own. It took all of the skill and prescience gifted her from Tzeentch to not be decapitated in a set of speedy strikes that would be the answer to most things that would encounter the being that launched them. That speed, the runes and the power of the Four that went with them, and her own native strength, glorious and wondrous as it was. The two of them were too fast for Sailor V to see, only to track by the flashes of light where the Space Sword clashed with the Souldrinker, the explosive sparks of energy an overpowering kind of rush.

"I am not a God. I have been given a sacred duty, to be fulfilled until death."

_**So pompous. You are a weapon, disposable. A gun to be fired and wielded by the hands of those that deem themselves worthy to aim you at their foes. I am you, if you chose Chaos rather than the simpering little crybaby as the source of your powers! Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair!** _

With that she summoned the full power of the Dark Wind to create a tornado, aiming it straight for Sailor V. Snarling, Uranus called upon her mastery of the True Wind and in a sudden eruption of flashing kaleidoscopic Chaos-energy the tornado and its power ceased to exist in a blinding flash of light, the Mikaboshi hurled off her feet, retaining her grip on her sword. Her body's impact echoed with the sound of something far larger than she was, and it was as Uranus strode toward her with her sword out, gleaming with rightness and righteousness that anger surged through her in turn.

Roaring with a soul-shattering bellow enhanced by the blessings of three of the Ruinous Powers, an Unlight burst from the gauntlet without a sword in it, colliding with Uranus in a blow that hurled her into the depths of the sea, the power ripping into her unhindered by anything she could have said or done to try to stop it. Like a stone Uranus began to sink, and the Mikaboshi laughed as she vanished in a sudden flash of light that left parts of the Edo River frozen over and the chill of the grave and the sense of a timeless and unafathomable evil behind her.

Only two seconds later, over the ocean, appeared Sailor Neptune who dove into the sea before Venus, who'd stared in shock, could think to do more than blink and look in awe at the sight of Neptune simply diving into the ocean, pulling out an unconscious Uranus, Fuku smoking and blasted with rips in certain areas that gave Venus a very good eyeful of a surprisingly curvy and beautiful body. Neptune did not notice the mirror that appeared at her side, nor would she notice it for a few hours to come, nor question why it felt like a missing part of her had suddenly made its rightful appearance.

Instead she focused on calling out the seawater from Haruka's lungs (a success) and on trying to heal her and get her to breathe (a failure). A sudden chill grasped Sailor V and she went over to her likewise, trying to focus her healing, and the power, the strange unlight that had ripped out and into Uranus, proved resilient to both of them, though it weakened somewhat.

Then a being like them and yet not, a seeming child much younger than they with pink odangoes raised something that made the eyes of Venus and Neptune go very wide indeed. She spoke the high language of the Moon Court that both Neptune and Venus remembered, though only one other of the Senshi retained that knowledge. The Silver Crystal glowed and its light extended outward, embracing Sailor Uranus, repairing the damaged Fuku (to the relief for different reasons of Venus and Neptune) and from her was cast a thing that howled and slavered, a bluish thing of fire that looked like the old mythical medieval Blemey, except made of a gleaming fire that jibbered and capered in unwords. The light of the Silver Crystal turned toward it and the entity crumbled into ash and was no more, Unmade by the only power outside of another, more fearsome entity, in all creation capable of the feat.

"You're not Sailor Moon," said V in a suspicious fashion. "Only the royal family have the Silver Crystal. You're not Sailor Moon, so who are you?"

The small girl gave her a strange grin, the kind of sickly grin that belonged on a much more mature face and said awkwardly "Well uh....bye!" and in a flash of light she vanished. Neptune held Uranus in a bone-crushing hug, tears flowing down her face. She did not notice or truly care about anything at this point except two things. Something, somehow, had nearly killed Uranus and she had not seen whatever it was, whatever it, the thing that had done this to her beloved was, in any of her visions. And two, Uranus was alive, alive after everything when she had heard a confession that would give her the patience to endure whatever would and wouldn't happen with Kenji, a kiss to sustain years of patience.

V looked with those furrowed brows and then Moon and the rest of the Senshi arrived, looks of fear palpable on all their faces. Minako gritted her teeth. It seemed that perhaps, just perhaps, she would have to start actively leading the Senshi in combat after the Arctic, after she'd tried to go back to working alone. There was no other option now. The Dark Senshi might be working with the enemy or not working with it, but the Dark Senshi had decided to side with the foe, and that meant that there was no other way forward. All of them together, again. She couldn't resist muttering beneath her breath that she hoped none of them would have to die this time.

Then, as the other Senshi processed the overlapping fears and terror raised by the sudden change in the enemy's tactics and the broader revelation that would have to follow both the Dark Senshi and her ranting insane rambles on "Zarathrustra", V turned to Sailor Moon, and the just-arrived Tuxedo Mask. 

"Do you have the Silver Crystal on you, Princess?"

Moon looked at her confused, almost stupidly. Then she raised her broach and it shone with that light, and V (and Neptune) both stiffened.

"Why?" Moon's voice was as suspicious as Rei's could be, leavened by a strange undertone of fear.

"There's another being out there with if not the Silver Crystal, a Silver Crystal. And there's a very few ways that could happen."

"Is she one of them?" It was Sailor Saturn, of all of them, who asked, her eyes flickering to Uranus and her Senshi discipline just barely edging out Hotaru's desire to run to her father and hold her tight to assure herself she was OK.

"I'm not sure. If not for her, Uranus would be...." she bit her lip. "She healed her, with that other Crystal. Does that make her a friend? I'm not sure. There shouldn't be two Silver Crystals in a single time."

She looked around. "But.....if she isn't here, then it must be part of the timestream as it's meant to be and that doesn't make sense to me either. A new enemy, attacking us in what was a logical sequence and now it's switched tactics. That rip in spacetime that the news thinks is a new nebula (and it really, really isn't). Now a random new Senshi that isn't one of us, wielding something that's either from the deep past or the far future." 

She bit her lip again. "I did not want to do this, not like this, but....."

She raised her sword.

"In the old days, in the old Silver Millennium, it was the task of Sailor Venus to command the other Senshi, and to be the chief Guardian of the Queen. You are not yet, I think, ready to be Queen, Usagi, but I ask this of you, and all of the rest of you."

Her eyes flickered Mercury-Jupiter-Saturn-Mars-Neptune-Mars-Uranus-Moon-Mars. Then one last time to the Princess.

"Do you take me to be the commander of the Senshi?"

As one the other Senshi bowed, the bows those of a subordinate to a superior. Venus's sword flashed to recognize the oath, then she sheathed the katana calmly, and told them "Let's go to the Hikawa Shrine. We have much work to do." As one, the Senshi teleported, only Uranus not fully teleporting herself, working with Neptune to do so. 

BLACK MOON CLAN BASE:

The Wise Man on his throne continued to reflect on the sudden and unexpected kind of danger Uranus presented. And there was that other factor.

The Mikaboshi's sword drank the power of our Daimon-Droids, denying the Black Crystal their power. Uranus has her Talisman and she dispatched Kaolinite. She cannot stop us from feeding the Crystal.....yet. She has just regained the Talisman, I do not believe she knows what it's capable of doing, yet.

He looked to his servants and to their 'allies' from the Tau Nebula.

_**Germatoid and Kaolinite have attained the martyrdom they sought. So have a few of your Daimons.** _

The hood turned to the group of entities known as the Witches Five, who looked more than slightly uneasy at how a hood without a face so unerringly tracked their motions.

_**We know enough of the power of the Senshi, and the Rabbit taunts us by flitting in and out of our grasp with the other Silver Crystal gleaming in her possession.** _

What seemed to be hands steepled together on the throne.

_**Very well, then. We know how to find the Rabbit, now. She has a fixation on the Lost One, same as we do. Find a means to isolate Sailor Uranus.** _

Then his gaze turned to Prince Sapphire.

_**You.** _

What was and wasn't a finger pointed straight at him.

_**As they draw out and entrap Uranus, wait in the shadows. Capture the Rabbit, and bring her to us.** _

Then his gaze turned to the other servants of the Black Moon Clan.

_**When the Witches Five secure their own martyrdom and their role in fueling the power of the Crystal, you are to go next, to draw the Senshi into battles. When we capture the Rabbit, I will grant her what I believe is a desire she would take even from the hands of the Great Enemy, were it offered.** _

A grisly sound like lips peeling from flesh echoed from beneath the hood.

_**I believe the child that cannot become a woman on her own would welcome that, and a new Crystal to grant her still greater power as she does so.** _

The Black Moon Clan and the last of the Tau Nebula smiled, the Witches Five saluting and withdrawing slightly to plan.

 **And the false Pharaoh 90?** asked Mistress 90.

_**He has slain Germatoid without much of any difficulty in the matter, but I cannot see a reason why he would pursue-** _

_Sir,_ spoke Berthier. _Our sensors detect that the False Pharaoh 90 has.....teleported, by some mechanical means._

**_Where?_ **

Berthier looked once, twice, thrice, then shook her head.

_Nuremberg._

_**Hmm.** _

Then the hooded 'face' turned to Rubeus and the Spectre sisters.

_**Change of plans. Go to Nuremberg. Find the False Pharaoh 90 and either kill him or bring him to us on his knees.** _

Kneeling, they said: 

**_As you will it, Wiseman._ **

The Witches Five spoke together, drawing up the basis of a plan, and teleported away.

The Spectre Sisters and Rubeus likewise vanished, a look of determination on their face.


	33. I Teach You the Superman

NUREMBERG:

Rubeus and the Spectre Sisters had not been sure what to expect when they arrived, following the monstrously powerful psychic presence that gleamed like a sun in a portion of Nuremberg's outskirts. They certainly did not expect to see what looked like the traces of what had been a deep, extremely powerful bunker capable of withstanding a direct hit from a small-yield thermonuclear weapon shattered like a giant had poked it with a finger, nor the broken corpse of a being that had proportions that were somehow _wrong_ and what seemed like two bodies, four legs and four arms and two heads, the heads lolling from broken necks. It had not taken them but a minute to arrive, and the false Pharaoh 90 had been there for but five minutes prior. 

They especially did not expect that the False Pharaoh 90 would be hovering over the ruins he had made, the broken corpse of the thing he'd killed and planned to dissect suspended by a telekinetic grip like a broken puppet in a fashion like the Vitruvian man, nor that he would turn to see them. The thing did not look like a man, but more like a massively squat monster, his skin an inhuman mixture of charcoal grey and deep orange, yellow animal-eyes gleaming. It spoke to them not in Japanese nor German, but in their own tongue from the far future, in a telepathic burst that shook them by its precision:

_**More cattle for the slaughter, sent by your uncaring lord.** _

_How dare you insult Wiseman this way!_

Yrvin snorted.

_**The other ones reacted...poorly...to the loss of even a Youma. Your master sends his servants to die without a regret or a second thought. He comes from the future and leaves a rip in spacetime over the orbit of a planet heedless that other things, and worse things could follow him. Whatever it promised you, it won't give it to you.** _

We were promised an end to immortality, Rubeus spoke.

_**Oh.....well, let me assure you from my acquaintance with monsters greater than the thing pretending to be Wiseman that when a species becomes deathless, that process is not reversible. You are servants of a false god that made false promises. On your heads be it.** _

With that, as Rubeus stayed back, the four Ayakashi sisters lunged into combat, Berthier seeking to freeze Pharaoh 90's feet in ice, Koan summoning roiling blasts of fire that created heat shimmers, Petz lightning bolts.

Yet it was none of them that amused him, instead turning his gaze to Calaveras.

_**You think you can control my mind, and take me to your leader as an enthralled piece of Roes'in cattle?** _

With that he flicked his wrist and a nano-tech portal formed around the corpse of the Zarathrustra-abomination, and Yrvin raised his hands in a mocking surrender.

_**By all means, aliens, take me to your leader. I surrender.** _

Only Rubeus sensed the fullness of the danger, the Ayakashi sisters viewing the surrender of the monster as proof of their power. Rubeus looked closely, where Berthier had cast ice the boots were not even slightly rimmed with melting water, and none of the other powers had made impacts, either. 

They arrived at Vorkuta, Pharaoh 90 striding into the realm of his foes with a smug confidence that increased Rubeus's unease.

When they arrived, Rubeus said:

_Lord Wise Man, we bring you the false Pharaoh 90._

Both Mistress 90 and the Wise Man turned their eyes to the entity that stood before them, uncuffed and unbound, his bright white teeth a gleaming half-moon in that face, the yellow animal-eyes gleaming with a ferocious power that made Mistress 90 tremble and the Wise Man uneasy.

 _ **Kneel,**_ spoke the Wise Man. 

Lord Pharaoh 90 spoke not in a psychic element but in his own native language:

_Zekhtah._

The word's meaning (no) was understood by the Wise Man, who stood up from his throne.

_**I said kneel, alien.** _

_Zekhtah._

Now the smile was still more mocking, and his eyes turned to Mistress 90.

 _ **I saw a glimpse of your face in the mind of that one-**_ his finger pointed to Calaveras, and then his smile seemed to become still more terrifying.

_**Now I know for certain where you are. You think running to the shadows of Chaos will protect you?** _

It was then that he chose to levitate over the survivors of the Tau Nebula and the Black Moon Clan.

_**Yours are not the only powers in existence.** _

With that his telekinetic power erupted outward in a sphere that buffeted both about as casually as if it was nothing, and in a second assertion of that same power Mistress 90 was gripped up in a grip of such power that her feeble struggles ceased.

 _ **I welcome death, even at your hands**_ , she hissed.

 _ **You'll get the chance,**_ he mocked, speaking in the tongue of the Tau Nebula in a psychic taunt, before throwing her down and hovering closer to the Wise Man.

_**I am no-one's servant, Nemesis. I slew a Nebula that was sapient, reduced it to the shattered detritus I tossed down as if it was nothing. A planet, even one supercharged by the Ruinous Power that is within you?** _

He smiled coldly.

_**To wreck a star is power, to do so to a mere planet is nothing. Her life-** _

At this the Wise Man turned to the fallen Mistress 90.

_**Her life is forfeit when I deem it time. Otherwise, I have no quarrel with you, nor concern for your affairs save that you leave the abomination to me.** _

_**Abomination?** _

_**The one they call Sailor Uranus. The only success across this world in an endless string of attempts to engineer one of those things you have made your enemies. She is a success, but that makes her more dangerous to one like me, not less. Humans have no business meddling with the technology of their betters. And you, O planet that pretends and fails badly in the effort to be a man, or akin to a man, claim enormous power but you must be weaker than you claim. Otherwise you would be honest even to your nominal allies. Do they know what your little crystal does to them and to their souls, and that all that they are is but offerings to bring you here?** _

_**You're lying.** _

_**Am I? It's not me you have to convince, Nemesis. It's them.** _

With that Lord Pharaoh 90 smirked and activated his portal, vanishing into it with a mocking laughter that was not telepathic but a deep bellowing grunting sound drawn from an inhuman vocal apparatus, telepathy letting it echo with a reverberation that lasted long after he vanished.

Only by drawing very deeply on the power that remained to her of the original Pharaoh 90 and the enhanced Mistress 9 did Mistress 90 repair her snapped vocal cord and shattered bones, an effort that left her on her knees, exhausted.

It was Rubeus who looked at the Wise Man closely. 

_It wasn't lying, was it?_

He heard that grisly sound akin to a smile and then a bolt of power from the Wise Man seared him clean through, leaving a hole in his torso, and then he slumped over, a brilliant shining crystal extending from his body and devoured hungrily by Mistress 90.

_**Any further foolish questions?** _

With that his gaze turned to Emerald.

_**The plans with Uranus and the Rabbit have not changed. I will ensure that our allies of the Tau Nebula remain assured of my power, of my presence, and my plan. You, Diamond, the Boule Sisters, depart to your quarters.** _

Obedient and shell-shocked after the casual murder of Rubeus, his gaze turned to the Ayakashi sisters. For a moment he let the appearance of the Wise Man slip, and the deep and endless blackness within his presence reduced the Sisters into stupefied awe, and left them to slumber before him. Then, mask reasserted, his gaze returned to that of the remaining Tauans.

_**Why did it call you Nemesis?** _

Knowing that none of his pawns could hear him, he spoke not with the voice of the Wise Man but the might and majesty of Nemesis itself:

_**Because I am Nemesis. I was one of the last to fight against Serenity, using the blood of the Lost One to tap into elements of magic. It gave me power, if a small taste of it, enough to fight the weaker Senshi on equal forms, and to rip open a hole into existence to escape. I found the planet Nemesis, which needed a host. It found a man who wanted no part of immortality, and it offered me.....** _

And for a moment in time a shadow and a gravitational effect made the Tauans prostrate, the shadow blotting out the sun and creating a distortion effect over the Arctic Circle akin to a Solar Eclipse.

**EVERYTHING. IT MADE ME INTO WHAT I AM NOW, OR I SHOULD SAY WHAT WE ARE NOW.**

**YOU OF THE TAU NEBULA KNOW THAT FEELING AND THAT UNITY, OR YOU DID AT ONE TIME. LORD PHARAOH 90, THE FIRST ONE, WAS LIKE ME, WAS HE NOT?**

They nodded. Mistress 90 spoke: **_Yes, that is so._**

 **THE THING THAT APPEARED HERE THAT USED HIS NAME WAS NOT LYING. IT CAN DO MORE THAN IT SAYS. WE WILL NOT DRAW ITS ATTENTION FURTHER.**

Then Nemesis's gaze turned to Mistress 90.

**BY THE MIGHT OF MY MALEFIC BLACK CRYSTAL, I BLESS YOU AND GRANT YOU POWER OF MY OWN ORIGIN. YOU SHALL NEED IT, GIVEN ALL THAT IS ARRAYED AGAINST YOU.**

**_My gratitude, Nemesis._ **

With that the shadow vanished instantly and it was the hovering figure with glowing eyes and invisible body that returned to a seemingly humanoid shape.

**Now, as for those four......**

That grisly sound of a smile returned.

**There is work to be done with them.**

HIKAWA SHRINE:

The Senshi looked at each other with determination, the plan complete.

Venus smiled, and then decided to take the calculated risk of transforming back, still not certain how her true form would be met by all the other girls. As Aino Minako joined the other girls in what became a much more comfortable environment when instead of the fangirling squee, there was a look of initial bemusement and then impressed nods. Some part of Minako that feared Venus could devour her mind and her personality was deeply relieved by this, and her own loneliness and sense of her burden shifted in what became a momentous transformation that she relished.

Even then, as they enjoyed a chance to just be a bunch of girls who were just that, on the minds of Minako, Usagi, and Michiru remained the strange being that teleported in and out with the alternate Sailor Crystal. Pink hair was very, very rare worldwide but it was a natural hair color. Usagi's little sister Chibiusa had that hair color, and so did one in every five million humans. Odangos were not all that uncommon either, especially in China, but at times in Japan as well. No child of eight could tap into Senshi powers or command the Crystal, that eliminated Chibiusa as a candidate. 

Usagi relaxed into Mamoru's arms, feeling more content to be there than she had anticipated possible, especially with how they'd met. Soon, she vowed, she would cross a line and seek to give Mamoru something that would be remembered and treasured by both of them. Soon. No rush. For now, there was seeing Minako and Rei sparring in a kind of verbal sparring match that straddled the line between friendship and guessing which of them would be stopped from strangling the other first. For now, there was patience and watching Michiru and Ami connecting as the two water senshi, seeing Haruka and Hotaru having a relationship very much that of a father and daughter, Hotaru's humor all the same a jarring reminder that young as Hotaru was, Saturn was ancient and her wit matched that. 

Too, there was Makoto, content to watch Minako and Rei yelling at each other, their heads seeming to grow and their arms little dots that moved in a blurring fashion, a distinct amusement crossing her face. The Senshi had found each other again, and their rhythms were both those of the old Kingdom and yet something entirely new. Usagi smiled, and seemed to dose off a bit, content.

TSUKINO HOUSE:

Chibi Sailor Moon teleported just outside the house, content that her secret remained one, hiding her Crystal in her own broach.

Then she heard a voice say:

_How do you have a Silver Crystal, exactly?_

She whirled. It was Luna.

She sweatdropped, face going pale.

"Um....it's a really, really long story."

Luna's fur bristled and she hissed.

_Tell me that story. There should not be more than one Crystal in a point in time. You could kill us all!_

With that, Chibi Sailor Moon sighed and de-transformed and Luna's eyes went very wide. So Usagi was right.

With that, she went to her room with the cat and locked the door, telling her the full story, her eight hundred years of childhood, seeing the Lunar Imperium become a vast and towering fortress and fortification and monument to power to rival that of the spirit of the Golden Queen. Her mother on her great throne holding together the Imperium and seldom needing to leave her throne but when she did, the universe itself trembled in her wake. As she mentioned her relationship with the seven Senshi, Luna stopped her.

_Seven? There should have been eight._

"Until I saw her fight on that beach, all i knew of Sailor Uranus was Neptune's stories. We call her the Lost One. She was killed by an alien that called itself Lord Pharaoh 90, the Architect of Fear, and her Star-Seed was destroyed."

Luna's eyes went wide with fear.

She squeaked quietly. _Oh._

"Yes. And.......now that you know all that," Chibiusa sighed deeply and her mask of childhood briefly collapsed. "I am a woman of eight hundred years and my body remains this stunted childish.....monster. There's something wrong with me. My mind, my heart, my desires.....are those of a being of my truthful age. My flesh is that of a child, and it is that which people see, and prefer to see. It would be.......unthinkable, to do otherwise. Which as much as I understand, it doesn't help. When i knew the Queen in the future, she and my father were so deeply in love I expected to see that here. And instead....I learned that my father bullied my mother, did so in a way that made her hate him and despise him. She never said anything about that."

"I can understand it, but......I like to think I might have come to respect my papa, who isn't really my papa yet if I hadn't seen that."

She crossed her arms.

"Puu told me to fix the future. If I was doing that bad a job I think she would have left the doors"

_Puu?_

"Guardian Pluto."

Luna's eyes widened and her posture became more that of a human than a cat.

 _She didn't reincarnate like all the rest of the Senshi did_.

"Puu is.....different. She has the power of time, she doesn't reincarnate so much as....takes a body. She explained it to me. She also treats me like who I want to be more than i am. I.....I miss her."

Luna nodded.

_Well, we'll see what happens. This is why Usagi said you weren't her sister, isn't it?_

"Yeah, my crystal hides my identity from everyone."

Everyone except the wielder of the Crystal of this time.

She nodded.

_Shouldn't she know who you are?_

"Puu told me that to tell people in the past the future....changes it."

_Isn't that why you're here?_

Chibiusa blinked.

"Oh."

Then Chibiusa finished her story, telling the full element up to when she'd come back through the spacetime rift, and Luna's face turned an uncanny white with fear, her fur bristling.

_I.....I see. You need to tell your mother, and tell her soon. These creatures from the future would know who all of the Senshi are. The future them didn't hide their names._

Chibiusa went pale herself, seeming to shrink for a moment.

"OK, I will."


	34. The Wheel of History Turns:

TSUKINO HOUSEHOLD:

After another normal day at school, Tsukino Usagi noticed her 'sister' with the pink odangos was unusually quiet and even sullen-seeming. It was a behavior that didn't fit with someone who seemed her age and how she was that age and what she went about doing _with_ that age. She'd had a wonderful time with Mamoru and kept touching her lips, the memory of their first kiss something that she would cling to even as the ancient and immortal Neo-Queen Serenity of the future. Not the way she'd intended, anticipated, or even expected the kiss. He'd taken her to the place where they'd first fought together as Sailor Moon and Tuxedo Kamen, taken here there and after such cute and awkward stammering had taken her hand and told her seriously:

"Usako, I.....there is something about you that speaks to me and I don't know how much of this is Endymion and how much of you and all of this is Serenity but...." and then he drew her into a kiss that was awkward and fumbling, as first kisses tended to be, but it was a step beyond anything they had ever done. She'd felt a lighter step and a sense of giddiness. And then home, and Chibiusa, her 'sister' sullen and morose. And then, after all of that, still giddy with that rush of emotions, going to their room when her sister quietly said "I want to talk to you" in a voice that seemed much. much older than that of the Chibusa she knew and more often than not wanted to strangle for reasons including the sheer unnaturalness of who she was. It was also a voice flavored with a strange accent.

So she'd gone in with her, quietly slipping her henshin from her purse into her sleeve, her arm remaining stiff.

"You know I'm not your sister," that accented voice continued. "You're right. Your magic stops you from falling for the great.....veil, because my magic has a similar source."

The broach she wore as a necklace was unclasped, and from it a crystal shone that had Usagi start, her henshin slipping from her sleeve and clattering to the floor.

"That's.....how...."

"It's the Silver Crystal of 1,000 years into the future. And in that future, a thousand years from now....I'm your daughter."

"M-My daughter?"

Her eyes were very, very wide.

"W-W-W-Who is the father?"

"You know him as Chiba Mamoru. Or....Mamo-Chan." 

Usagi's face went pale, and that kiss she had been giddy about and Mamoru's words came back to haunt her.

" _There is something about you that speaks to me_ " and her eyes focused again on the girl.

"Why are you here?" For a moment it was not the voice of silly Tsukino Usagi who wanted to enjoy being a normal girl with normal friends and much more akin to that of the Serenity she knew.

"In the future, you and papa become the King and Queen of the world, and of the renewed Moon Kingdom."

Usagi looked up at the stars. She knew the Moon Kingdom had been restored, and the various planets with it. Not all of the Senshi, really, not any of the Senshi, had yet retaken their castles. Well, bar one. Charon Castle, and its mysterious inhabitant was the only one that had regained something of a presence in the Moon Kingdom of the 20th Century. And she suspected that Sailor V knew something more of her castle than she'd let on and that this was part of why she was so standoffish to the rest of her Senshi, even when she was moving to become the General again.

Chibiusa, voice flavored by the strange accent, continued "I was born 800 years into that future, and I've been a child ever since. I think something in me is broken, the real me is 800 years old, and I have all the strength, all the power you'd expect from that. But physically?" she raised her hand and it went up and down her. "I look eight. it's....really hard to pretend to be a child in the wrong era and in the wrong culture with an accent that's so creepily old all the time."

Shuddering slightly. "When you and papa become the rulers of the world, you offered humanity immortality, an end to age, to dying, to sickness. The only price paid was the purging of humanity's negative motions, connected to something you called the Great Enemy. In the near future, you and I face a monster called the Golden Queen, who has soldiers called Animates, things that aren't really human, or Senshi, but have access to the fuller powers of the Senshi. The eight Senshi and you, plus....visitors....ultimately won and after a few more adventures against other enemies comes the Deep Freeze."

Usagi cocked her head. "Eight? But.....there's nine Senshi."

"There were nine, yeah. Then there were eight."

A stab of painful fear shot through Usagi. "Who died?"

"Uranus. Or as we know her in that future, The Lost One. She encountered an alien, a very strange alien, calling itself Lord Pharaoh 90 and he/it killed her. Killed her in a way she couldn't come back. Michiru, Neptune.....she was never the same. She went.........she didn't become the Golden Queen but the Queen of the Deep was a great warrior."

"Was?"

"Yes. After the Deep Freeze, humanity mostly accepted immortality and agelessness. A price more than worth paying for everything else. To most people. There was a small group that viewed this as unnatural, claiming it made the risk of making everyone like a being they called the Abomination. A golden-armored entity with the psychic power to crush stars and a sword of fire. warlike, and war-wager. That was what they said. Under their leader, a being calling himself the Urizen, they encountered something calling itself the Wise Man. They rejected immortality, and embraced dark powers, and they became the Dark Moon Clan. The Wise Man offered them other ways and other magic, and when they took it...."

She shuddered. "There was a long war against them, they brought countless droids to the war. The kind of things you and your Senshi-now are fighting. The future-ones were....different. Easier to kill. Crumbled into sand. Not......tentactly blobs of entrails. The mom I know, Queen Serenity, and her Senshi fought them all and fought them well, until the Wise Man decided to attack personally. And so he did. He.......stormed the palace, he hurt you, and I fled, taking the Crystal of my time with me."

Usagi stared at her blankly, face still pale. She knew, somehow, perhaps from the Crystal, perhaps instinct, perhaps from her mind adjusting to the new everything, that Chibiusa had told her the real truth. The thought of a daughter, a daughter had 200 years from now by the boy who'd bullied her and become her first love, Crystal Tokyo, everything.....had her pale and hyperventilating, trembling. The 800 year old immortal in the child's body understood this and she went to the crying, trembling, pale, stammering girl who was her future mother and held her tightly, Usagi giving into more wrenching sobs that were interspersed with fear.

Something real and important changed between the future Queen and Princess, and Chibiusa felt a sense of warm relief as a part of her that had always felt empty and aching with the perfect Empress of the Crystal Imperium fulfilled with the younger, tearful girl who would become her.

THE DOOR OF THE OUTER SENSHI HOUSE:

It had been an easy thing for Meiou Setsuna when the time for her path and its change came, the easiest thing, to step from the Doors. It was timeless and it was too long all at once, and it felt good to leave the realm of omniscient demigods. It had been a long time since the Arctic, since D-Point, since......returning to the Doors and the Timeless realm she called her own. Time and its necessities, more precisely the rip in spacetime over Tokyo and what was poised to come through it, freed her of her duties at the gates. It had been too long, and not long enough, and so many other things, besides. Dressed in a refined dress with her civilian identity new and fresh and full of anticipation, she stood on the doorstep, before moving her hand too quickly and too slowly all at once.

Three knocks, each like the trump of doom, and then the door opened. It was Haruka, Haruka who stared and looked in awe at her, and then suddenly hugged her with a swiftness and a strength that shocked her and which she eagerly welcomed. What had drawn her to here, and to the when and the why, was a change in the future. A kind that she had hoped for and never imagined she would have the chance to see. A future, a far future, where Tenoh Haruka lived, where the Black Moon Clan had broken, and where Crystal Tokyo was a paradise and not the first shadows of the worse future, the deeper one that ended with a tall and swollen figure in red armor with glowing horns of magic and a great mace that stepped through the doors with a face of heavily tattooed gold and a voice like honey.

One of twenty sons of the Chaos-Bane, the Golden King, fallen and become a monster. And that mace swinging, swinging for her and then nothingness and the blessedness of oblivion and being spared what would take humanity at last. That would be more than twenty-five thousand years into the future and part of the onset of what humanity would come to call the Cybernetic Revolt, its first encounter with the thing that later generations would turn Urizen, Aurelian. the Seventeenth. The Bearer of the Word. Lorgar. Knowing this had been a fixed point in time, it did nothing to detract from the reality, the blessed reality that she and her Queen and her family would get it right and lead humanity into the Age of Technology, the Golden Age.

And....would leave humanity a Throne for someone, no....something else to pick up. Flashes of distant futures and the distant past flitted through her mind and it was two people, one of whom she remembered and was surprised and found herself ashamed for feeling more than slightly irritated to see. Kenji and Michiru. Michiru was Haruka's fate and every part of her being and her heart beat for Michiru, yet the same impulses that in another time and another era would have led her to run from her destiny as long and fast and hard as she could had led her to something that would leave scars on them all. She knew the future had changed in key ways, and that she would be playing not one but two different parts in two different incarnations. 

This too flitted through a timeless mind in the time it took to get hugs from Michiru and to be quite literally tackled to the ground by an enthusiastic cheeering-weeping Hotaru.

Pluto had returned, and for another time, the Outer family was together again. Only the part of Hotaru that was Saturn and Michiru fully grasped the potential, and it was communicated in silent stares and eyebrow raisings, and an equally silent nod, at which point Michiru Kaioh's usually stoic face became one with a wide and seemingly uncharacteristic smile. She could not resist returning it. 

For now, the terrible fate of the Doors had receded, and the demigod whose power and sphere was time itself was lesser than the woman. And there was a very large part of her that was not only grateful for this, but immensely proud of Chibiusa and her more than succeeding in precisely what she needed to do. That would be later. For now....she had her family back.

THE NEXT DAY, NEAR THE HIKAWA SHRINE:

Meiou Setsuna waited with her fellow Outer Senshi as the last of the Inners arrived. They were surprised to see her, and none moreso than Usagi's 'sister' who squealed with joy to see her, and to see Hotaru,and then jumped to hug Setsuna, who smiled warmly.

A flash of light followed and each of the Witches Five stepped out. Eudial on the right, Mimete next to her, Tellu and Viluy standing in a relative proximity and both staring at each other with dirty looks, and after them all was Cyprine. The power of the Black Crystal flowed through them and amplified their inner Daimonic elements, but they had not come here to fight to win, they had come to reap the harvest of death. Five of the children of the Tau Nebula, the last children of a dead realm come to die. Ten Senshi, all transformed and all focusing on their power, and within seconds each sprang outward the other. Uranus blurred outward first as Jupiter moved upward. Uranus, who had begun to delve more deeply into what it was to be mistress of the wind after the encounter with the monster in black armor unleashed her prowess to keep her foes off balance. Her sword and talisman moved outward and impaled Mimete, who stared blankly and then smiled with a contented grin, Jupiter's thunder echoing out as Mercury, focusing more deeply on her powers and her analyses of them, smiled when she formed a set of icicles and then hurled them at Viluy, whose nano-tech shields held up against Mercury but shattered against Venus's sword.

Cyprine sought to send out waves of hate only to find herself facing Neptune and Saturn, as Chibi Moon, Moon, and Mars squared off against Telluy, whose vines crackled with lightning but against the healing power of the twin Crystals disintegrated as if it was nothing, while Mars's flames burned and withered away others into ashes, Mars grinning as the creatures fell. Mimete's body writhed and then she arose as a vast and bubbling mass of reddish tissue with great fangs that extended outward in a V-shape, howling with an ear-shattering whining drone. So too with Eudial, who fell to a combined blast of Uranus's World Shaking and Jupiter's lightning, the creature raising itself up and roaring, moving with a blinding speed, barreling into and against Senshi, blasting aside Mercury and colliding into Mars, whose fires blazed outward and made it draw back with a droning howl, as the Gem and Aqua Mirror obliterated Cyprine, who did not rise again, while Saturn's glaive moved with a deft skill, amplified by the winds of Uranus and Jupiter, the healing light of both Moons and both Silver Crystals drawing and reinforcing the Senshi, and banishing and weakening the powers of the daimons, which found themselves incapable of sustaining presence and heft.

Another few minutes later, the Witches Five and their last traces were gone.

Pluto smiled at her fellow Senshi, as Minako said "Well, that was exciting," snorting as the rest of the team shook their heads.

VORKUTA BASE:

The Black Crystal drank into itself eagerly the souls of the WItches Five, gleaming with an ever more powerful drone.

 _ **Soon**_ , the Wise Man muttered. The prospect of feeding the Tauan energies into the Crystal accelerated his plans, and his gaze turned to the Ayakashi Sisters.

_**You humbled the entity calling itself Pharaoh 90. Now........now events have accelerated. The younger Moon Senshi must be isolated from her family. You shall bring her to me.** _

With that his gaze turned to Mistress 90, who smiled coldly and nodded, even partially bowing.

**As you will it, Wise Man, so then shall it be.**

_**Will you be going to die so soon, Mistress 90?** _

**No, Wise Man. I have more vengeance to sate, I will die when it is my time, when I have Sailor Uranus begging me for mercy, weeping, soulless, and ashamed. Until then, the Crystal regains strength. And I shall be glad to bring the dear princess and her little Crystal to you.**

She smiled, coldly and cruelly.

He then turned to Princes Sapphire and Diamond.

Each of you will be entrusted with one of the Silver Crystals when the time is right.

With that she vanished, and the Ayakashi sisters bowed, triumphant smiles on their faces.


	35. Time's Winged Chariot:

OSAKA:

Looking at the ruins of her old life, the being that had been for a brief time a woman with a life of her own and an aimless, purposeless hedonism frowned. The building had burned down and with a cold sneer she turned to look at the homeless woman she'd yoked into the building and transformed by the eldritch fires of unknown nature that coursed through her. The building was burned down and she, her mortal shell, was dead. Somehow, this other thing, these _other_ Chaos entities, let her see glimpses of a great infinity. Arbors of strange things like decay and despair wrought into a singular form. A great silver maze ever-changing and incompatibly so from eyeblink to eyeblink. A vast and towering sea of blood and on that sea an ever-growing mountain of skulls and a great brass giant with a wolf-like face and eyes that glowed with the light of dying stars. And a hedonistic sensation-sight that was endless frenzy and glory and slaughter but it was always a thing that left aching withdrawals. And beyond that, beyond all the powerful senses of energy that were the natural gift of Senshi, she saw _souls._ The literal metaphysical makeup of individuals.

Saw thoughts, yes, emotions, yes. But she saw and knew souls and the inner temptations and depravities within. Only three of the Powers had blessed her as yet, but then there were only Three in truth and yet that other one, that fourth one, that would erupt in a distant far future as a dying empire dragged this galaxy into an abyss of its own making was there, too. She saw souls, and she saw minds. The mind of the thing that nestled in Pharaoh 90 Industries was not quite the force of he called the Anathema but it was much closer than the Anathema's daughter-spawn-lover-whichever word fit. Chaos was her blessing, and she had become anew the August Darkling-Star, and those infantile specimens that called themselves the Black Moon Clan had sent detritus to kill her.

She would become a foe to the Senshi, yes, but for the time being their goals danced along the same wavelength. With a sneer again she looked at the horridly burned corpse and then moved her hand to make a gesture of power. In a brilliant flash of Unlight she disappeared.

OUTSKIRTS OF TOKYO:

She reappeared where the Powers willed her. Here there were the servants of the Clan discussing and preparing to implement a plan, and a veritable army of their Droids with them. Four sneering sisters, each empowered as dark mirrors of the Inner Senshi. Toward the interior of Tokyo that mind pulsed still with its terrifying power as a small sun, the Anathema not on-world, vanished to parts unknown in its journey. She smiled, her teeth become sharp and able to bite through iron with the greatest of ease, and drew her great sword, the mutated cousin of the blades of the Dark Kingdom. Each of the runes of each of the three powers burned into existence, and she spoke with a speed that was the fell mirror of the power of the Wind the name Khorne eight times, dark and guttural and redolent with blood. That of Tzeentch spoken nine times, a whisper that was a whirlwind, drawing into it a progressively greater humming sound. And the name of Nurgle seven times, a guttural droning that left the air thick with the smell of decay.

The Ayakashi sisters froze. They sensed something, something powerful. It was not the monster in Pharaoh 90 Industries that had withdrawn into its lair to sulk, nor was it Mistress 90. Then it moved, in a sudden blurring motion that was akin to the power of the Lost One, but fell, made horrifying and reliant on energies of death and torture and pain. Soul-drinking runes flashed with light that was not light and the droids shattered and the daimons seemed to be drunk within and absorbed in still greater power and prowess, and as the Ayakashi sisters vanished, the droids were shattered, their power denied the Black Crystal, even as the creature relished the massacre, slowing and making each death slow and painful and progressively more cruel.

When she had fallen upon the last two droids, ripping them into pieces and squatting by their side, her iron-hewing teeth running with their blood and organs, she felt not one but two powerful pulses behind her, her feral glowing eyes turning to see two of the Senshi, for this time Sailors, not yet the future Guardians.

One, elegant and refined yet as true and destructive as steel, held before her a mirror. The other, tall, with short and messy hair, held a sword that was the healthier, hallowed cousin of her weapon and whatever Mistress 90 was no doubt forging for herself behind the back of the thing in Siberia.

"You don't belong here," spoke the blonde, as she raised her sword, and the creature made a guttural snarl.

_**Neither do you, Zarathrustra-thing.** _

The creature snarled again, a deeper and more resonant sound, one that made the air seem to cry in pain, raising the great sword.

Without any further words wasted, she lunged at the Outer Senshi, a blast of magic slamming into the Senshi of the water, taking satisfaction in the power of Great Tzeentch to defy the seer's visions and to deny her ability to call upon them. She was hurled into the sky and as the other Senshi looked in fear and horror, her sword lanced out.....only to see the other two of the Outer Senshi unveil themselves, the glaive blocking her, Pluto catching Neptune, and the creature snarling, knowing that power for what it was. Saturn. Death. True-death, the kind that not even the Powers of the Warp could unleash.

Her eyes met hers in a level stare.

"The power that propels you is empty, it needs a host. It will destroy you."

_**Then I shall die meeting my own goals as I see fit. We are not foes, little Senshi.** _

"You killed that woman, she did not die cleanly."

_**A price worth paying for the chance to abandon the hollow pretense of a life that was even less than what this is. I am no longer she who was there, I am the Amatsu-Mikaboshi, the first born of all that shall come. The first Bearer of the Word.** _

Pluto jolted at that phrase, the future-flash of a colossus with a golden face with three horns and a monstrously long mace passing through her as she heard that phrase spoken through cruel lips with fanged teeth that did not belong in a human mouth yet impossibly fit in a normal-seeming jaw.

She unleashed her power with a single shout:

_Deadly Scream!_

The creature raised its arms out and laughed, and the impact hurled it into the sky. Snarling with distaste, the thing vanished in a flash of light. A few minutes later the thing in Pharaoh 90 industries vanished again in that strange sensation of teleportation, appearing now in another of the various facilities where subsequently it seemed as if a very malicious giant had kicked it with an impact that registered on multiple Richter scales. As that city barely grasped the nature of the crisis that had abruptly befallen it, the facility in a run-down portion of Yorkshire saw a brief flash of very strange light and then a wrenching crunching sound and whatever strangeness had befallen it and shattered glass across a major portion of England and Scotland had vanished, leaving only a ruin that had collapsed still more fully.

The nature of the collapse was inexplicable. But so too the nature of the damage done, there was no substance of nature or man that could cut so keenly. Nor was there any known substance, even the shadowy monsters that were like faceless mannequins with those grisly squelching sounds that stalked shadows worldwide, harvesting death where the Senshi did not follow, feeding the Black Crystal its toll of souls, that could crush bodies like this. 

Within Pharaoh 90 Industries, as the next phase of creatures continued to be test-run by AI drones, the being that had done this stared at the corpse of the creature that had erupted out of the place howling with a gust of wind. It did not have the bracelets of the thing in Siberia but it was not that far removed from them, there was a strange kind of techno-organic thing that was a very crude kind of pain-engine as a motivator. Gazing dispassionately at the dissection, the entity shrugged. Another of the monsters down.

Then his sensors bleeped twice. Once, once more at the northeast fringe of Tokyo.

The second on the waterfront, where a signature that had managed to escape him the last time he'd returned to Nevada had returned.

The creature smiled, its bright white teeth standing out in the charcoal grey face, yellow eyes gleaming with a feral delight.

VORKUTA BASE:

The Wise Man stirred.

_**It has moved again.** _

"Nn?" That was Prince Diamond, who looked at the Wise Man uncertainly.

_**It. The thing in that building. The thing that came here. The living planet-destroying power locked in that form like and unlike that of a man. Germany, last time. Now England.** _

The Wise Man's eyeless face that was not a face looked at them.

_**It is good that we are leaving this time. There are other monsters her. We shall find the Rabbit, my servants. Find her, and gain a still greater ally who could replace.....what is to come.** _

"Lord Wise Man, must we all die to-"

_**Yes, little creature. You must. You rejected immortality, this is what that means.** _

The two princes knelt quietly, fearful. They had seen the fate of Rubeus, all of the children of the Black Moon Clan had. The attack on the Imperium had been one thing, a glorious thing that had brought them here. Now.....now they knew what they had reaped with the power of Chaos.

TOKYO WATERFRONT:

She could not be Mistress 90 openly, not here. Not yet. So was it that Mistress 90 reappeared as Sailor Iron Hands, clad in an altered version of her garments, now dark black with the interlocking sigils of the Tau Nebula and Uranus across the chest area like the deranged scrawl of a child. She smiled a hideous grin, her grin seemingly too wide for her face and then spoke the words she had spoken before the energy from the Tau Nebula had been allowed to nest within her.

_Iron Hands Power, Concealed._

With that Kyuujuu grinned. In this form she was human to all save perhaps the thing in the dragon's lair and that dragon had recently fed.

Her task would be simple, to wait for the Ayakashi sisters, who looked at her with a wariness mixed with hatred and respect, to engage the rest of the Senshi, then to simply grab the Rabbit. And then, with the planet-entity distracted with pursuit of its visions of making a new monster empowered by that Black Crystal, time to confront her 'sister' in the Project, the thing blessed with what she had needed to let in the last traces of the death-throes of a thing that should never have been. 

With a smile and a nod, the four Sisters looked to Mistress 90. They would wait the rest of the night and most of the next day, and then the Shrine, the Miko's lair, where the Senshi gathered.

That night the dreams of Neptune and Mars were troubled and both warned the Outer and Inner Senshi of trouble. Usagi and Mamoru, who had barely processed the revelation of the future and the first tugs of destiny's chains, heard Chibiusa asking them to join the other Senshi when Usagi met with Kino, Mizuno, and Aino. With visible unease the General agreed, and Chibiusa smiled. She had the future Crystal, and her mother that of the past. What could possibly go wrong?

The next day, after a blessedly normal day of exams and butting heads (and for Kaiou Michiru the deep annoyance of Haruka flaunting her efforts to defy destiny in her face still after the kiss they'd shared), all of the Senshi gathered, as they felt the presence of five entities near them. One felt familiar but not quite in the way they expected, like the Mikaboshi, somehow, and yet different. More like the thing in Nagoya that had been felt but no time to investigate it. The others.....

Four entities stepped out of the shadows. One was blue and her eyes gleamed as she channeled into herself the power of Ice and Snow, a high and cold laughter echoing with a silvery peel. One, felinoid in hair with claws, gleamed with eldritch fire mirrored in her eyes, levitating with the gleam bringing heat mirages where she hovered. Another likewise hovering had eerie unlight that gleamed as the fell mirror to Jupiter, her laughter not that of the thunder and the lightning but that of the maelstrom. And another gleamed with a weapon like sickly concentrated hate.

A fifth entity strode out with them, she looked eerily like Sailor Uranus's civilian form, save that her hair was a deep black hue, darker than the Mikaboshi's....and her eyes were hollow pits of Nothingness. 

"That's....not good," murmured the timid Chibi Moon.

_Iron Hands Power, Awaken!_

in a flash of light she hovered clad in a kind of blend of jump suit and a modified kind of body-armor, all in black with multiple interlocking elements in between plate armor and chain mail, sigils scrawled in a deranged pattern across her chest and arms.

It was Calaveras who threw down the gauntlet lashing out with her whip at Sailor V, who dodged it, shattering the ground as the Senshi moved toward the Sisters, Mistress 90's gaze turning slowly and levelly straight to the austere violet-eyed face of Sailor Saturn, eyes widening and then a sense of an altered possibility of what would have been hit. Mistress Nine would have had a host in that one, the Senshi of Death and Destruction and Rebirth, in the universe where a thing from another dimension had not given her the last of her master and god's power.

With that, Sailor Iron Hands dropped her mask and roared in an unhallowed bellow and lunged straight for Sailor Saturn first, even as Jupiter, Neptune, and Pluto moved to defend her.


	36. The Sisters Four:

EXTERIOR OF THE HIKAWA SHRINE:

All was blur and motion, the rival forces of the Senshi and the Sisters clashing in full and unlimited destructive force. Berthier's power over the ice and snow clashed with Mercury's mist and frost, the Dark Lightning and the true Jovian power and majesty of Jupiter were warring thunderstorms. Fire and Dark Fire gleamed, one in bright reddish hallowed senses, the other darker and gleaming with the fell elements of hate and the power of the Black Crystal. Love and Hate added their own dramatic elements, the sword and whip exploding with terrible light. Behind all of this, the howling bedlam of Mistress 90, clad in black armor and unleashing the power that coursed through her in deadly beams of destructive force, facing the swiftness and brute strength of Uranus, the keen tactical eye of Neptune, the time-distorting power of Pluto, and the deadly raw force of Saturn.

Even the power of him who had been her lord and her god left to him was enough to only stalemate this. Behind them all the two Princesses with their Silver Crystals and their healing and benediction-power merged with that of Tuxedo Kamen enhanced the power of their Senshi even as the being that was Mistress 90 had her eye fall straight to the smaller one, the being with the pink hair.

So that was the Rabbit. For all that she'd heard the ramblings of the deranged thing called Nemesis, she'd expected something bigger. As she continued to hold off the four Outer Senshi, only barely, she watched the Inners clashing with each of the Four sisters. Most of them were evenly matched, and the Senshi dodged and rightly so the power of Calaveras and the Hate that was her blessing and her gift from Chaos. Then her whip struck a Mars who was too slow to dodge it and with a sudden jolt she jerked and her eyes seemed to glow and she turned and unleashed a fireball straight for the Outer Senshi with a yell of anger, and the Outers, in turn distracted, gave her the first part of her chance.

Calaveras's whip struck next at a Jupiter descending to snap Mars out of it, and Jupiter yelled as her voice became the thunder and her lightning began to strike all sides impartially, making the other Senshi scatter and as the Sisters smiled, the Hate power began to surge through them. It was as they'd struck the last of the Senshi that the sudden chill and aura of menace of its different yet all too related. Frost rimmed the ground and the Sisters stared in confusion, as Mistress 90 seized her chance, tackling the younger Princess. Unseen by her and uncaring about the effect, the Crystal in her broach snapped off with the impact of her grasping her and hurling her upward, falling to the ground where it gleamed, unhurt. Vanishing with her, Mistress 90 smiled as the Hate-filled Inners clashed with the Outers, who were more than able to hold them off, but due to fighting to not wound them or even hurt them were incapable of breaking the stalemate.

The Mikaboshi moved with her own swiftness, her blade first impaling Calaveras, drinking in her soul, and she groaned in a guttural and near-orgasmic sense, licking her lips as she tasted the pleasures of the Ayakashi sister's blood. The death of Calaveras snapped the power of the Hate she induced, and Moon, no longer bound by healing her Senshi and trusting them to fight, chose for the first time to step forward, eyes determined, worried about the fate of her.....daughter, that word still felt unnatural to say. 

She began to speak and in that same instance, as her blade hewed the forearm of Koan off, the Mikaboshi's eyes widened and she vanished in a strange flash of light. Moon's words echoed as the last trace of her light vanished:

_Moon Healing Escalation!_

In a sudden and shining flash of purer light the monsters withered away as if they were nothing at all, the power of the Silver Crystal unleashed something that they could not withstand. It was Sailor Moon's first encounter with the sheer raw power of that which was her birthright, and it was only then that it fully dawned on her that Chibiusa was gone. Gone....and her Crystal was all that was left. 

The Mikaboshi had vanished, too.

The Senshi and Tuxedo Kamen looked at each other with worry.

Saturn's worried shout for Chibi-Moon only emphasized the awkwardness, and then a sudden dawning horror spread across the faces of the Senshi.

And only then in that same flash of light did the Mikaboshi reappear, and tell them:

 _ **I can help you find her**_ , with an insufferably smug expression on her face.

VORKUTA BASE:

Chibiusa awoke to find herself facing a being that seemed to be a floating white robe without a face or a body. It held in its hands a gleaming black crystal that produced a horrid droning sound and a metaphysical power that made her feel visibly nauseous.

_**Hello little Rabbit, time for you to grow up.** _

The creature began to laugh and as the power gathered in the crystal, augmented by the power gained from the souls of the Tauans, began to flow into her Chibiusa began to scream, visions and emotions coursing through her body, and as she grew and the power that was her inheritance from her mother responded to the other crystal, the Death-Gem, she knew with a sudden sinking feeling that she'd wanted to grow up, after 800 years stuck in a kid's body. This......she didn't want this. Nobody would want this.

It did not take that long, though her body and her soul felt like it took an eternity to be shaped and corrupted, as Chibiusa grew to become the being she should have been physically. Tall, clad in red and black, with long braids that matched her mother's and an Odango shape that matched hers likewise.

The new Black Lady smiled.

No more the child, now......

She laughed loudly, coldly, and cruelly. Summoning her power and that called into her by the Crystal, she reached out and with a casual stroke destroyed the rest of her new colleague's servants, flexing in her strength, in the native destructive power of the granddaughter of the old Queen Serenity.

At one stroke Princes Diamond and Sapphire, feeling this power, and seeking to plead against it, withered into smoke with a strangled 'no' the last sound that crossed their lips. Her power rippled outward further, creating a massive booming wave that rippled outward through parts of Canada and Russia and Hokkaido, as she levitated, crooning with the sensation of all that was within her.

The bodiless-seeming thing in the white robe smiled with a grisly sound.

The wretched thing in the black armor had tried to stop his plans, and to a degree she'd succeeded. Without the power of the army of Daimons and the Sisters Four, Black Lady was weaker than she would have otherwise been. Yet her powering up had flattened every living thing in the vicinity of the base.

_**Now, my Black Queen, let us return to the past. You are the sword of my Black Crystal. Your mother is weak, in the future. Let us go forth to slay her and cast her down.** _

With a smile, a cruel and sinister grin, Black Lady and the Wise Man of Nemesis vanished into the rift, flying with a speed and returning to a future that looked upon in horror.....where to their sudden and genuine bemusement, a Senshi who'd not been present in the very recent future-past was now present, unbowed and unharmed, in the fullness of her strength.

Eternal Sailor Uranus took one look at them, wept in sorrow for what had befallen the Princess, and vowed to strike down the monster that had brought such terrible ruin to her family, had slain Michiru, somehow, when she hadn't even been by her side. The Queen would make this right, regardless of her fate. 

It was stupefied awe and horror that had the Wise Man incapable of fighting back at first as her Space Sword Blaster hurled an arc of light into his darkness, a light that collided....with a resounding thunk, as the creature looked at her, and then laughed in a rolling thunderclap, swelling to more of his true size and power.

IN THE PAST, TOKYO:

You, we, must go to the future. He wanted those crystals-the Mikaboshi pointed to them with her sword, carefully edging away, as if fearful.

_**He wanted them and your little whelp. Well, he has her. No doubt filled her full of the poison of that Crystal, too.** _

Her gaze turned to Pluto.

_**You can take them through time, you can take us all through it, no?** _

Pluto nodded, a single stiff jerk.

_**Good.** _

"You hate us all." It was Saturn who spoke. "You hate us all down to our souls and you want us dead. Why are you helping us? Helping her?"

_**Simple, Death-Senshi, I want to be the one that kills you. And I owe them for trying to kill me, and for what they did to my sister.** _

It was then that they sensed the return of the being clad in the other black armor, the one with the insane yellow scrawls on it.

She was grinning now, grinning and thrilled to get the chance for that one great clash, the one that would vindicate all of the awfulness that went into her existence.

She landed with a force that cratered the ground, giggling madly.

_Bastards. Bastards. Eat you. Eat your cities, eat your children, eat your souls. Eating life, shitting skulls!_

She shrieked in a daemonic bellow that smote the sky and the air around her, and lunged straight for Sailor Moon, the roar transforming into the mad warbling giggle.


	37. 'Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron'

PALACE OF THE LUNAR IMPERIUM, DAWN OF M2:

The Wise Man swelled and grew, from a being that seemed slightly larger and wider than a man to a thing the size of a mountain that blocked the light of the Sun. His laughter was loud and echoing with a low and terrible infrasound basis, while the Black Lady was the one who strode toward Uranus. The future Senshi could not face her princess in a fashion suiting her duties, even with her princess....fallen, become evil and warped by the power of whatever that Black Crystal was. The Black Lady knew this and in her first movement lunged with a fist in a speed and strength that Uranus could not counter, knocking her down and her talisman from her hands.

_The power that is within me can be many things. Creation, healing. The kind that brought back the Black Moon Clan, the kind that creates a gilded paradise that would lead such people to reject it. Or it can be this. Destruction._

With that she raised her hands, over which grew a great sphere that was like a miniature star of a bluish hue streaked with elements of a black light that glowed with elements of a greenish lightning extending from it.

_None of you understood, none of you tried to understand. I am not a child, I have not been a child, and you all treated me like one because I looked the child and not a woman little younger than most of you, in all truth._

The ball increased in size and a low wind howled beneath it, as now it was suspended over the Black Lady by one hand.

_Behold that which lurked behind the child's face!_

The energy descended toward Uranus but then a blast of energy dissolved it without a murmur.

Black Lady looked up and out with a cold and sinister smile.

 _Mother,_ she purred.

Even without the Crystal, the power that surged within Neo-Queen Serenity was at least equal to that that had been there in the Golden Queen of old, after so long.

"No one is helped by Chaos, my daughter. It uses you."

Black Lady did not laugh or warble, she simply made a low bass snarl before unleashing bolts of energy against her mother that her mother deflected. As powerful as she was, nothing in Serenity could make her truly harm her daughter....and it was not just her that she had to fight. If it had been this changed and warped Small Lady alone, she could have prevailed without the Crystal. Against her and the mountainous thing that watched with eagerness and cold laughter, Serenity vowed to meet death as well as her mother had all those long years ago.

And then she felt him, her King, who had quietly healed all of her Senshi and restored them, and warned them that without the Crystals they had to protect the people of Crystal Tokyo and to shield them. In truth, Endymion did not wish them to see or to be stuck in an endless loop of facing another of their family fallen, taken. Warped. He rose up, the power of flight at work within him, and drew his sword, the Golden Crystal burning with the power and majesty of him who was its wielder.

The creature that was not their daughter snarled and launched a blast, only for him to deflect it at her with ease.

It was when he arrived that the mountain-thing that hovered began to move and focus its power against him, the laughter starting again as a low and staccato set of thunderclaps, as the defensive-offensive rhythm of the clash of Black Lady and Queen resumed.

OUTSKIRTS OF THE HIKAWA SHRINE:

The being that both was and wasn't Sailor Iron Hands, now overcharged with the energies of Mistress 9 and the last traces of the Tau Nebula giggled still more madly as she lunged for Saturn, only to get a combination of a blast from the Space Sword and a bolt of lightning from Jupiter to the face.The combination produced a tremendous flash of light and the ozone smell of lightning, hurling her back and upward into the skies. 

_Eat your cities, eat your children...._

The creature's giggles became snarls and she looked squarely at Uranus and Neptune, the two Outer Senshi warding Saturn, and then at the figure of Sailor Moon, whose lights gleamed with a power greater than anything she could have imagined. The full force of the Dark Wind at her disposal erupted outward, her will forming a vast tornado that she hurled at the Sailor Scouts, only to see Uranus dispel the Dark Wind with a tilt of her head, the True Wind negating the power of its fell counterpart. Uranus's smirk increased, goading her, and the bestial snarls were followed by her teeth becoming as fangs and her body swelling and growing in size, her spine projecting outward with the edges of the vertebrae like little scutes.

_Bastards._

The guttural snarl was followed by her diving downward, colliding into Uranus with a power that left a crater in the ground, her fists moving with a supreme swiftness even as Sailor Moon stepped forward, the Silver Crystals in her hands glowing still more brightly. Uranus was more than able to block the power of her dark counterpart, for what she grasped but dimly, driven by two to three incompatible and murderous purposes, Uranus mastered likewise effortlessly. When the Crystals had intensified, the Mikaboshi had withdrawn, at first, before murmuring to herself:

He cares not from whom the blood flows, only that it flows....and relishing the sensation of bleeding from her eyes, nose, and ears, moving her sword with a sudden motion toward the last of the Tauans, who snarled in turn in the guttural tongue that was that of the true speech of a dead world and the last of its survivors.

She grasped the sword, savoring the moment of triumph, only then realizing that far from shocked or annoyed, the Mikaboshi had a sinister grin on her face. The runes on the sword blazed with greater intensity and in that struggle of willpower, the light of the Crystals came closer to both of them, the other Senshi forming around Saturn and Uranus.

_Moon Healing Escalation!_

And in a flash of light both the Mikaboshi and Sailor Iron Hands were grasped in the raw power of the Crystals, the healing energy going against the emptiness and hatred of the Tau Nebula....and the dread power of the Four Gods that lurked and gnawed and grasped. Two kinds of emptiness and hatred that needed hosts to be at their greatest collided with the full power of the Princess of the Solar System. Sailor Iron Hands' snarls became shrieks of a damned soul and she withered into an ash that coated the Mikaboshi, who in turn hovered, and the power of Chaos that was worked into her and all the Dark Energy likewise erupted out of her as not one but five entities, a great emptiness with two glowing eyes, a thing that was a towering hooved figure that felt like blood and rage wrought into a visceral form, a bloated thing like a horridly distorted Kotei with a grinning face and visible entrails, a voluptuous creature with goat-like horns, S&M style leather straps and hands that were great pincers, and a being like a great bird made of flame. These entities all disintegrated into another thing of ash, and the Mikaboshi's armor in turn changed. From the dark power of Ruinous nature to a brilliant golden hue, her sword transformed.

It was not the Mikaboshi that fell, unconscious, but breathing low and slowly.

Awed at this display of their Princess's power, all the Senshi knelt as one as she placed both crystals in her broach and strode toward the breathing-but-unconscious golden figure. When she moved her hand, the being's eyes opened and she slowly, and painfully raised herself to a kneeling position like the rest.

"I......how am I alive?"

"You thought the force you let into yourself gave you a soul. It didn't. It corrupted the one you had. Souls are not made, nor given."

For a moment it was not Tsukino Usagi or Sailor Moon but the first shadow of the Queen yet to come who spoke:

"If you would give me your oath, you will become another of the Senshi."

"I.....I will/"

She spoke in a tongue that was not quite hers, following a subtle guidance steered by the powers of both crystals.

"Rise, Sailor Titania," and with that, the new Senshi of Mercy rose.

Amazed and disoriented, she looked out to the other Senshi, grasping that they neither understood her nor trusted her, and not truly expecting anything different.

"I have a daughter to save," she mused, then pointed to Tuxedo Kamen. "Of all of his, his power is weakest. Guard him, keep the monster in the future from hurting him." 

"As you will it, my Princess." With that the Senshi then turned to Pluto, who nodded, and in a single display of the fullness of her powers took them with her, the only traces of the combat a strange dust that coated elements of what lurked before it and a crater driven into a street.

THE DOORS OF TIME AND NIGHT:

It was here, at the Doors, that the Senshi for the first time grasped a small element of how Sailor Pluto's long and lonely existence within and without the courses of time worked. The Doors were cold and they were ancient, more of a vast arched thing that was both a very real door through which it was possible to go anywhere up and down the timestream one wished. A low and thick fog coated elements, a fog that was both shield and warning and which brought flashbacks that brought low murmurs of awe and tears. They could not say how long it took them, but there they were, standing at the realm. 

Pluto went to the Doors, knowing instinctively where and how to look, and it was not that hard to search, really. Her future self had greeted her upon her arrival before the other Senshi had been able to find their way here, imparting to her where and when to send everyone.

The Doors opened and in a single pulse of timeless distortion, that which was past hurled into the future.

CRYSTAL PALACE, M2:

The first thing that dawned on all the Senshi was just how massive the Crystal Palace was. Meant to administer a Solar System as the beating heart of a planetary-system empire, it was easily the entire size of the Tokyo Prefecture of their time. It was stunningly beautiful and yet austere, crystalline, but seemingingly almost entirely organically grown. Above the Palace hovered a gigantic thing, the master of the Black Moon Clan. It looked vaguely humanoid but like a great grave-shroud opened, within it a Darkness that was not Darkness but the immaterial flesh of the Nothingness that chafed at Order, at peace, hope, love.

The living mountain clashed with a single figure whose power was awe-inspiring, not that of the Silver Crystal but akin to it. The Senshi, staring in stupefied wonder, then moved as one, flying from the outskirts of the palace to where the dark powers of the Black Lady clashed with the Queen, leaving them to see the sight of no less than the future form of Prince Endymion, wearing not the mask of the past but a helm, the Golden Crystal empowering him to fight the Mountain-creature to a standstill, but both locked in a stalemate that was finely balanced.

As the Mountain-thing turned to face the sudden appearance of entities from the past, disconcerted, the Black Lady turned and snarled again, using a combination of a sudden physical attack and an energy blast to hurl down Serenity, and the look of wonder on the face of the youthful Sailor Moon to reach out and grasp the two Silver Crystals, yelling with a sudden triumphant howl.

_The game is done, we've won, we've won!_

With that, she tossed the broach aside, holding the crystals in her hands, and raising them, preparing to shatter them.

Pluto's eyes narrowed. Thus far she had fulfilled her mission and her role as guardian of time, even managing to repair much of what had gone so horribly wrong. Now.......

The Black Lady called upon the full power of the Black Crystal within her, that had replaced her own starseed as her hands began to glow with eldritch energy that encased both of the crystals. She raised them over her head, and then with that, Pluto closed her eyes and raised her staff, and slammed it down as the Crystals fell from Black Lady's hands.

The impact of the haft of her staff on the Palace walls was marked by a sudden freezing of time everywhere within the boundary of the Solar System, the skeletal grin of Black Lady frozen in time, a bolt of Golden Crystal power aiming straight for the eyes of the gigantic mountain-thing. Mercury's wide-eyed wonder, Venus's look of awe and despair. Moon's worry and questioning her of what she was doing frozen in time. Mars's fires aiming for the giant along with Jupiter's lightning, likewise frozen. Saturn frozen as she reached for her, the shout of denial frozen in mid-voice, and the two other Outer Senshi frozen in mid-stride, while Sailor Titania had sought to attack the mountain-thing in the back with her transformed sword, proving herself a worthy addition to their number.

Time was frozen, the grandest display of her powers, only her in motion. That power that filled her would be her death, but it would be worth it. She moved with the speed that was the birthright of all Senshi, all of them only slow relative to Uranus, who at her greatest speed could move from the Oort Cloud to the Earth in the time it took lightning to flash and returning before thunder would peal. Her greatest, admittedly, when she became Eternal Sailor Uranus, Guardian of the Heavens. Next to her they were all slow, but next to any baseline human they were blurring entities of tremendous power and perfect beauty. It was in that sense that she grabbed the Crystals, purifying them of that power, and then with a blink of her eyes and a flash from her Talisman, time reasserted itself.

The blasts of the King, of Jupiter and Mars, and a sudden arcing blast of light from Titania struck the Wise Man at the same time as she stood, with a soft smile, by Sailor Moon and Neo-Queen Serenity both, moving in that last burst of her speed and strength to return each crystal to its rightful ruler. Her strength expired and she slumped to her knees, a wistful smile on her face as she stared into the past-present-future, seeing the wounds that had been carved in time slowly repairing. Not fully repaired yet, but.....

Black Lady's sinister smiles and glorying in her newfound power faded, and both Saturn and Chibiusa, who in a flash of light that marked the fall of the Malecific Black Crystal from her, and the thudding impact of it against the roof of the Crystal Palace reverted to who she had been before coming to Siberia, shouted "Puu!" in an agonized tone of voice and ran to her.

She was fading, she knew, her body turning to a gleaming starlight, and she could feel their tears, their hold.

"I cannot stop time without.....without going to the Doors."

She looked at Chibiusa.

"You're all right." Her smile was soft, and as her body continued to dissolve into starlight the Outer Senshi, moving away from their own blasts from their own Talisman, suddenly shouted "NO" and ran to her, and in her last few minutes in this incarnation, as her body dissolved, they all saw a cryptic smile on Pluto's face. None would have grasped that she was content, even ecstatic, that she had not only saved her family but found reason to believe that one more incarnation and she might......

As she vanished the Outer Senshi bowed their heads in sorrow, and then Sailor Moon and Neo-Queen Serenity, who found herself looking outward and puzzled at why seconds ago she had thought of an Imperium enforced by fire and sword and the sheer glories of her Senshi and the throngs of the Lunar Army and now thought of a Kingdom of peace, immortalty, an endless paradise that thrived on the good things in human and alien natures that were reified by her magic, moved to joint Endymion, who was likewise joined by Tuxedo Kamen.

A bestial snarl echoed from the voice of the thing in the shroud.

**_You cannot thwart me, Sailor Moon, Queen Serenity. You have destroyed my last minions by the sacrifice of your Time Guardian, and the madness of that which was the last of the Tau Nebula._ **

**_Servants are not greater than the Masters. Come then, Monarchs four, and know thy better. I was never the Wise Man of Nemesis.....I am Nemesis!_ **

With that the Black Crystal rose and opened a portal and in a sudden lurching sense, Neo-Queen Serenity, Sailor Moon, Tuxedo Kamen, and King Endymion were drawn into it.


	38. Nemesis:

THE PLANET-DIMENSION OF NEMESIS:

Each of the four Senshi, two the future King and Queen, two their distant past selves, fell from the rift made by the Crystal. Their power was that of holiness and healing, but beyond that, all of them could fly and remembered this, landing with dignity and grace. The vast realm was not truly a planet in a conventional sense. There was no star in the endless darkness of that sky, and the endless magma-dark soil that felt like accumulated filth and hate beneath their feet likewise was not akin to true soil.

Endymion helped up Tuxedo Kamen, as Serenity did Sailor Moon.

"Well, here we are then," huffed Endymion.

"The Senshi can't follow us," he continued, looking at his wife. 

She nodded. "They can't follow us but we know we make it through this all right,"

He raised an eyebrow.

"How?"

She pointed to her past self and his.

"Well, they haven't faded, and neither have we."

Endymion raised his hand, pointer finger out, mouth opened, then closed it.

"Point."

He looked at his past self, and removed his helm. Tuxedo Kamen's eyes bugged out.

"So......I take it our daughter wasn't that much of a pain in the past?"

"Uh....no, no she wasn't"

"Good."

The air of Nemesis thrummed with power and the soil seemed to form a body out of the dust of the ground, the hand grasping the crystal, and the body rose. It was four times the size of a man, the crystal thrumming in its hands, eyes glowing with that hate and emptiness.

It spoke, with the arrogance and confidence of a being in its domain.

_**YOU ARE IN MY REALM AND MY DOMAIN NOW, LITTLE KINGS AND QUEENS. YOU WILL NOT RETURN.** _

With that his power surged out in a rippling roiling wave of unimaginable destructive force, colliding against the power of the Golden Crystal and not one but two Silver Crystals. The powers of Destruction and Wrath and Healing and Love collided in a bow-shock and explosive results, the creature roaring in pain.

**_THE CRYSTAL THAT ENABLED ME TO EMPOWER AND TO DRINK THE BLOOD OF THOSE WHO WERE EMPOWERED IS NO LESS GREAT THAN YOURS. YOURS THE CRYSTALS OF BENEVOLENT EMPIRE, MINE THAT OF THAT WHICH PREDATES YOU, AND ALL THAT YOU BRING._ **

It snarled and more of that power rippled out, but it collided again with that which was its antithesis and the creature groaned at a low and pained level, as the four Monarchs looked at each other.

"Wait," said Sailor Moon. "If two of you can stop him...."

Tuxedo Kamen finished her thought: "Then four of us can break him."

With that the four monarchs grasped each other's wrists. Tuxedo Kamen, not yet aware of what precisely gave his future self all of his power and the ability to fight a monster of this nature. He instinctively had begun to grasp not only that like Sailor Moon he could heal, but that he commanded power to grant energy and power to others, those who needed them most. Not yet at its fullest nature, his strength in this sense showed the first flashes of what was to come, as his power surged into that of the other three, the Golden Crystal drinking from not one but two sources, and intertwining with the power and the pulses of the two Silver Crystals.

Neo-Queen Serenity, aware of elements that were changing and yet changing for the better, nodded to her counterpart. She could read her mind easily, Usagi not yet grasping that she would need to shield it. Not so very long before all of this, she, and Tuxedo Kamen, had learned that their daughter was....their daughter. This, she remembered, was one thing that had not changed. She'd thought about a relationship with Mamoru, the two had shared their first kiss...and then their future daughter landed out of the future and the Black Moon Clan. And then the visit to a future that changed as the past changed, in a process that had begun in the snows of the Arctic, and was rippling into a turbocharged experience, as it would in the year and a half to come.

Sailor Moon for her part decided that the easiest thing to do at present was to focus on ending Nemesis, and finding her way back to the future. She would need time, patience, space. She would need it all, she would have it all, and then.....

With their power linked together, a star did arise in and around Nemesis. The star was the combined power of the fledgling beings that would become the King and Queen of Crystal Tokyo, and their future selves. It was a light of hope, love, compassion, all the good things. Against it the raw destructive force of the Great Enemy, the Great Nothingness, was as nothing at all. The light grew, and before it the darkness shrank, as light grew around them. Nemesis had underestimated both their power and that a crystal the match of any one of of the other Crystals did not face one, but three.

The decaying planet formed a colossal thing with a snarling face and a grasping hand to reach toward them with an aggrieved howl of pain and agony, but the fingers crumbled and blew away and with a single sighing moan of despair, so did Nemesis. Soon, all that was left in a great emptiness of a true Void, neither good nor ill, was the four of them, and with wrists interlocked, they focused their will on the Crystal Palace, and the past.

NEPTUNE, M2:

On Castle Triton, the broken body of she who had fought with a tenacity to join her then-deceased lover sparked with healing energy as the monarchs returned to the Palace. The wounds healed and her bones returned to the places and positions they belonged, it was only a minute or so later that Neptune sat up, taking a deep breath and savoring the feeling of air. Then she paused. She felt a presence, in the stars. Castle Miranda gleamed, thrummed with power, and so did Uranus. Somehow, in some way.....

The memories of the world that had been remained vivid with her still as she went to her teleportation chamber and activated the locus.

CRYSTAL PALACE, CRYSTAL TOKYO, M2:

Two flashes of light followed. One was the return of the four monarchs, sent from time and space into the familiar realms of two of them even as old memories 'corrected' themselves into the new reality that had always been. This one shone with a brilliant white hue of love and gentleness in a reality of harshness and of monsters.

Another was a deep oceanic aqua hue and carried with it the salty briny odor of the deep, and from it stepped Guardian Neptune, who looked with eyes that still carried, briefly, the old memories at Guardian Uranus, who had returned with the rest. The future Senshi stood apart, in certain ways, each charged in full by the power of their Crystals. The past Senshi looked around, staring in awe at the peacefulness of Crystal Tokyo and the memory, however brief, of the spartan and warlike shape of the Imperium and its ways was one that had sunk in, the emotions more visceral than any words.

Guardian Neptune, dignity forgotten, collided with Guardian Uranus, who raised an eyebrow, her memories always those of a new world, and not understanding that the Guardians of her own time, whose memories were likewise shifting fully, gazed at her with wonder, awe, hope.

With that, the King and Queen of the future turned to their past counterparts, and knelt before them, and then words were spoken that by the curiosities of the changes of space and time and the laws that govern the courses of history would echo into the past and shape the future, and would only begin to make sense in the more distant elements. Words spoken, tears shed, and glimpses of the future, and a heartfelt hug and a promise that "I will return" from a girl who felt in the wake of seeing her mother, as she is, and as she was, go with two versions of her father into the belly of a beast and slay it, that her changes had finally come to her. Somehow, the desperate hope of a being that looked like a child and was not, somehow all of this had changed.

She didn't need to know how, all that mattered was that the change was there, and that her memories of future blessings could and would alter things and lead to that link between herself and Saturn that had become more than a dream. With that, a portal opened, and the past Senshi stepped through it.

OUTSKIRT OF THE HIKAWA SHRINE:

The light returned to the outskirts of the shrine, and each of the Senshi stepped through. This time, they had finally faced and brought down another enemy, and knew something of what the future held for them.

It was Aino Minako who asked Usagi, gently:

"Not going to wipe our memories this time?"

The Princess, detransformed and keeping her Crystal in her broach, shook her head.

"No. No. We're going to stay together, and stay friends."

With that, all of the Senshi stepped forward and put their hands atop each other. Only Sailor Titania remained diffident at first, but then she stepped forward and her gauntlet of a brilliant bright gold joined the gloves of the rest. Quietly, in that communication of magic that was neither thought nor simple magic in whole and the best and strongest elements of both, they shared common vows.

Then, each departed from the shrine, leaving last only Hino Rei and Titania, who looked forlornly outward. Each of the Senshi had lives, each hoped for a blessed interval to just live life, a time without monsters.

She looked to Sailor Titania.

"What about you?"

"I......I have nowhere to go. I destroyed traces of my old life. I.......have much to atone for. It's a violent world, if I go out and do good things.....maybe that will make something of a difference, too."

With that she vanished in an unconscious use of the Sailor Teleport.

Hino Rei had never felt so content to sweep her temple in her life, humming an old song with great contentment.

STAR KINGDOM OF KARAKORUM:

The Kingdom had fallen, its armies laid waste, Galaxia triumphant.

Standing atop a literal mound of corpses that bled blood and other, less normal and wholesome juices, she wiped off her sword on one of the robes, and placed it within her scabbard, resting her hands on her hips.

She looked to the twin Senshi of this world, beings that shared two Star-Seeds that were mirrors of each other, and smiled.

They knelt before her. It had been mostly them, in the end, who had turned, who had massacred their people to prove their loyalty and their usefulness to her.

With a sudden flash she moved and her sword impaled each of them, taking their Star-Seeds, her new bracelets adorning their wrists, transforming their Fukus and their dresses, likewise. 

_**Rise, Sailors Chi and Phi. You have proven yourselves my new Marshals. I have a task worthy of you.** _

With that they vanished leaving behind another world and empire of smouldering rubble and broken bodies.

Galaxia's tread was confident and calm, even as part of her wept, knowing that it was not Chaos that did this entirely now. She was starting to relish it, relish the thrill of conquest and of great destruction.

She turned to a pair of brilliant golden doors.

 _ **Here are the collected Star Seeds of two galaxies and the first worlds of this one. None until you have proven worthy to guard them. You have my task to command your fellow Animates, to be my eyes and ears, my swords of shining steel that carve the Galaxy. As it burns, you are the Marshals of the Shadow Galactica**_.

With that she strode away, and Sailors Chi and Psi took their places, looking sternly at Sailors Iron Mouse, Lead Crow, and Aluminum Seiren, then they shared a terrible and sadistic grin that came with the blessing of the horrors they had unleashed. 

TSUKINO HOUSE:

Usagi mused on her return that the vanishing of Chibiusa as if she'd never been would in the past have made her joyful.

Now......she missed her, and looked forward not only to seeing her again, but casting about to bring about a new era. She paused at the room that had been Chibiusa's brushing it with a small sad smile on her face.

They had fought D-Point, where only she had survived that. Now they had seen and braved the courses of time and space (and that rift that had been ripped by the Black Moon Clan was still an ugly blight in the upper Solar System where only the Kami knew what could crawl or make their ways out of it) to face another monster in the future.

The words, the small monologue, of Neo-Queen Serenity were burned into her.

Words that warned her of a Great Enemy, a foe with a name she dared not speak aloud.

Words of warning that the Senshi path would not be an easy one, that it would be harder to grasp the full nature of life with monsters to fight.

And....words of warning that not all enemies were the result of the Great Enemy, and that for the Senshi in all times and all eras, it was these things that were the most dangerous opponents, for what invariably destroyed the hellspawns of the Great Enemy did not automatically work against these foes.

And last, the warning about a great transformation that would follow whenever the next foe revealed himself.

A few tears rolled down her face and she put her head to the doorframe, letting emotions that had been buried for a time in the frenetic pace of events follow. She let them loose for nearly two hours, finally drying off her face and wiping her nose. Her parents and brother would be home soon, and it would be nice to truly just....live.

OUTER SENSHI HOUSE:

Michiru remembered still more vividly the statements of her future self, especially where Kenji was concerned. They were leavened with a sharp anger but also a mixture of sadness, and even jealousy. She knew, and knew intimately, where and how things with this would go. Yet.....the part of her that loved Haruka knew that Haruka would come out of this with the belief that her future self going from non-existent to meeting her and believing she had always been as further proof that destiny, their destiny, could be defied. Her love was happy, so as she paused at the room to see Haruka poring over textbooks and feeling her joy in doing things in such a normal way, with Kenji's arm around her waist, she gave a brief sad smile, and went on into the kitchen with Hotaru, where both began to fix dinner and took joy in the simple things of being alive, being real.

PHARAOH 90 INDUSTRIES LABORATORY:

Finally, murmured the being that hid behind the image of the corporate magnate.

He looked at the map.

_**The Senshi removed one of my targets for me, which leaves but six more.** _

Six pins remained on the map, and two images. One the sneering black armored-black eyed-face of the Mikaboshi, the other the face of the blonde girl he'd captured and done his experiments upon, deciphering, as the organs preserved in jars proved, just how powerful Senshi healing really was even with an artificially engineered one.

He would eliminate the other four, and with his new set of monsters ready, when the time was right, he would go forth and remove the last two of Zarathrustra's leavings.

The being with his golden animal-eyes looked at the slumbering monster in its tube. His father had needed far more manpower and machinery to do what he'd done, but then his ambitions were greater. He neither needed nor desired the kind of beasts his father made in the Red Room.

_**Yes.....you'll do nicely. Make a few hundred more of you, slay four more monsters with these feeble primitives relaxing their guard in each case to make the delight of making them fearful that much more pleasurable....and then, I get to return to a properly civilized planet.** _

He snorted.

_**And I will finally be able to stop concealing my birthright lest the other monsters decide to get in my way.** _

With that he moved back from the tube and turned off the lights, looking out over the new, thriving school. Already the healing-serum had revolutionized medicine, worldwide. He had brought too, the ability to manufacture a new kind of metal designed to help grant power against the kind of monsters spawned by Chaos, something that would prove useful (for even if he did nothing, there were other entities out there). Next.....he reflected, next he would spread one of the first kinds of military technology, a new kind of communications sent to the more impoverished and wartorn areas first.

Then he looked out over Mugen Gakken, smiling coldly at the new school. As always, the power of the Architects was predominantly secured in knowledge and the ways it was wielded. Such had over the long courses of time remade himself and his family into the colossi they all were.

Now the other great threats were gone, and it was his time. And, still more amusingly, the Senshi had even finished the job he'd left undone for him.

**_What fools these mortals be._ **

END OF BOOK II.   



	39. 'I teach you the Superman'

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The beginning of Book III. The Inner Senshi have all passed their high school exams, Sailors V and Titania are in a kind of one-upsmanship game of who's the better superhero to whom. Michiru and Haruka have a recurrence of a very old dream, and behind all this, Pharaoh 90 Industries sees old plans starting to come to fruition at long last.

BOOK III: THE THING THAT CAME TO TOKYO

OUTER SENSHI RESIDENCE:

Michiru had had a couple of weeks of no dreams of this kind since the Black Moon Clan had been destroyed. In two weeks, much had already changed, admittedly. All of the Senshi fought lesser monsters, some like things of folklore. The creature Moon had destroyed two nights ago was one of those. And some, like the thing that Michiru had fought before she'd come home, different. She'd fought a strange thing like a dog of sorts but like it was made of a solid crystalline blood with great dinosaurian fringes from its head, oozing an aura of rage and menace and such terrible bloodlust. One _Deep Submerge_ later and it had dispersed, and one movement of her talisman later and the four that had taken its place were dispersed as well. Normal.....was different in a world where first the healing device, then the new communications devices used by Pharaoh 90 Industries and fully rolled out in Japan first, and now soon to be worldwide, were altering the world in profound ways.

Normal also meant that the creature in Pharaoh 90 Industries that the annoying jackass had shown them was amassing greater power and influence. Pharaoh 90 Industries had risen to a meteoric level, too, becoming the great architect of a new kind of information technology. It had already overturned medical understandings that were centuries, if not millennia, old. It had given soldiers new and deadly killing machines. And now the new Sim-devices. The Internet, already extant in elements in the United States, faced a rival challenge from what the creature that tried to be human and due to its powers, somehow, deceived as readily as their own magic hid their true natures from the eyes of others. This Sim Screen was now possible to manufacture by Earth's own technology, and it was highly addictive. It had overtaken the Japanese market in a way that nothing of the abortive schemes of the Dark Kingdom could have matched. She'd bought one, out of a desire to understand the nature of the monster of her worst nightmares. She'd fallen asleep in her room with the thing still on, though her screensaver bounced with a set of images of Haruka.

That day had seen her come back from a concert, and a battle against the four monsters, finding Haruka wrapped up in Hotaru's arms with the annoying jackass smiling and nodding to her as he left, clearly wounded from the fight she'd had the day prior. Another kind of monster, this one akin to an Onna-Bugeisha of Yokai lore. She'd huffed in frustration, then gone off to sleep, after spending time on the new device that she knew, instinctively, not just by human primordial senses but by something in her magic was some horrid product of alien science that could not be meant for good. She'd read in-depth on conspiracy-mongering about aliens that masqueraded as human and had been bemused at the rantings of a man called Icke who viewed everyone in prominent places, even musicians like herself, as 'lizardpeople' but somehow the one entity she knew really was an alien in power pretending badly to be a human being was not on that list.

That did not influence nor shape the dream that stalked upon her in that same form, in spite of all Setsuna's cryptic hints that the future had changed.

_Pharaoh 90 Industries burned, half of Tokyo flattened in the wake of a psychic bow-shock, the Senshi hurled out, even the Princess stalemated by the sheer weight of that force. Yet, though she was stalemated at first, she girded herself and drew on the new powers of Super Sailor Moon and with the Crystal her guide bored through each of the psychic shields even as the monster hovered over Haruka, raising its right hand with the palm up, fingers curling in._

_**You know what you are, what you have always been. No different to Sailor Iron Hands, or to the creature that was once your enemy. You are the only one with a conscience and full humanity, but it is my sacred duty before my order that I must slay you all the same.** _

_With that the creature then clenched his fist and Haruka did not scream, there was only a horrid crunching sound and Sailor Moon's tears flowed freely, as did Michiru's own, and as Moon reached the monster, he smiled coldly at her._

_**No more Sailor of the Wind** , it snarled, and then Haruka's star-seed, her very soul, was obliterated with a thought and Michiru's world died, and she could not move, not breathe, even as the Princess's light erupted and the power of healing and compassion fought with a mind that could lay low the Solar System with a thought._

Michiru awoke instantly, fearful to go back to sleep. She had not seen this, not seen this fate of Haruka's, in a long time. She'd seen the other fate, the distant one where they both lived an unimaginably long time and then came a time in the far future where an abomination in vaguely human shape but too vast and too...everything....sought to kill them one by one and succeeded. To die at the hands of the Bearer of the Word was a fate that could be avoided, given the changes of twenty-five thousand years. The imagery of the monster with charcoal-grey skin, reddish stripes on the face, and those horrid yellow eyes slaying her love and destroying her soul?

The tears that came to her flowed as they had not in a long time, and she got out of her bed and padded to Haruka's room.

Haruka was having the dream again. It was not a good dream.

_Out of the darkness she was coming, a being of perfect power and perfect beauty. That ultimately was why they must kill her. That ultimately was why they could not._

_With speed she dodged weaponry in the ground, mines activated with a single contemptuous display of power by the thing that followed her, drinking in her despair at seeing all its statements proven true._

_Out of the darkness she was coming, and their fire blazed against her and it could not harm her._

_Flamethrowers sought to master her, but these were the things of simple Earth manufacture, not the dreadful fires of things like Metallia. She took it and gazed at the people who wielded its deadly caress at her and moved with a blinding speed, tapping people with a super-strong blow that left them winded, a few bones broken a worthwhile price to pay._

_Somehow her beneficiary had trodden through the hellscape of smoke and dust and fire, and she turned back. The bald bearded German, the CEO and founder of Pharaoh 90 Industries, looked back at her but his eyes were golden, animal-eyes, no longer those of a man._

She awoke in turn, seeing her door open and hearing footsteps padding and the sound of tears and sniffles.

"Michi?"

The figure stepped in and it was Michi.

"Michi, what's wrong?"

"I had the dream again, Haruka."

Haruka blanched.

"I'm....sorry. It can't be easy to deal with that."

"No....it isn't."

"You can stay here with me tonight. Kenji won't mind."

Michiru couldn't resist a sneer and a small snarl at hearing the name, but Haruka stared at her surprisingly placid and simply welcomed her to her bed. The two slept in the same bed again, as they had not in the months since the nightmares had faded, and in each other's arms the return of old dreams of terror faded for the warmth of love.

ALKALI LAKE, ALBERTA, CANADA:

Sailor Venus stared in dismay at the sight of everything within this facility. This time, following the sequence of facilities attacked and devastated by a being of enormous power, the people in this facility had prepared. They had asked her, not Titania, because she was the more experienced of the Senshi. The most, in point of fact, moreso than all the rest. Titania had sighed with a depressed sense until she grasped precisely both what kind of facility had asked and then had turned pale and gone off to hunt monsters abroad, a thing that Venus had not expected from Titania at all until she'd arrived. She sensed an aura of menace from the machines and the facility, alien technology copied, and copied badly. 

And there was it. The thing derived from what she knew somehow was not only connected, but why the body of the Guardian Uranus reborn as Tenoh Haruka had not....changed. The thought of the insult and of the danger at science and generals playing with powerful magic they understood not in the least goaded her at one level. But....she had not gained her experience to lose her cool or display her thoughts so evenly as Venus.

The thing looked in between a human, a sasquatch, and a gorilla in shapes of proportions, with a horrid mane-like head of blonde hair, and glowing blue eyes. It looked at her intelligently, but in a sense of appraising her as a threat. And then, horridly, it had bowed before her in a human sense, and something in her, the Venus of the Silver Millennium who had been a source of Chaos and the Xenos threat alike rose with a killing urge. She wanted to lay low the place and the hubris of mortals meddling in the affairs of their betters.

Then there was it, whatever was attacking places like this. She was the reserve, before her was a joint US-Canadian task force including one of the largest US deployments in North America, the largest since the 1860s. No less than a hundred thousand US and Canadian troops chock-full of firepower, deployed in a set of defense in depth lines. The United States had also included a weapon that was why she was within a bunker easily sealed against a greater force. A thermonuclear weapon. The creature they feared had stalked into their capital and spirited away secrets and casually struck military facilities worldwide.

Global nuclear powers were fearful and vulnerable to this thing in a way they had not in most ways truly felt with Chaos.

It was the small hours of the morning when it came.

The first sign was when a single being that looked like a man casually strode up to the road. No normal person wearing such a snazzy business suit would appear from a sphere of light and walk to an active war zone, and the artillery rounds directed at him opened fire in a time on target strike prepared and waiting for just this. Then in a single instance, every single one of the weapons was suspended in mid-air, the creature transforming. What had seemed a man in a business suit with a clean-shaven upper lip and a thick mustache was now a creature in a strange kind of plate armor with ridges and shapes that were horribly organic-styled, a helm that resembled a skinned face and a visor revealing terrible golden eyes.

It was that moment when the glamour fell that the shells were suspended, then erupted in a massive shower of shrapnel, the shrapnel in turn moved by telekinesis to shred the air support, both the AWACS vehicle and the eight drones, and destroying the six fighters with them.

Then she felt it, that terrible psychic presence, and there was no screaming, no sounds, no gunfire. Just......a terrible stillness and the appalled feeling of a psychic force moving toward her that reminded her of what memories and the imagery shown her by the Outer Senshi proved she'd encountered at least once. Then it had been toying with them all, perhaps. Maybe. The sensation there was followed by a sudden silence that intensified as the creature paused, knowing what the wave of thoughts that had brushed against his mind had shown him was en route. Wrapping himself in a telekinetic shield, the power that could warp and obliterate suns formed a sphere as a brilliant flash of light erupted, a multi-colored thing that was followed by the shockwave and the raising of a mushroom cloud, and an impact registered into Montana and outward across parts of Canada.

The first nuclear deployment in warfare since World War II had not come lightly, but the impact of the thing's rampages across nuclear powers had led to the demand, and the approval of all the other nuclear powers. Now a hundred thousand men were destroyed and the most fearful of mankind's weaponry deployed, and the psychic shield retained itself intact as the being raised himself into the air and went to the bunker. The loss of a hundred thousand primitives was as nothing to him, they were a lesser kind of life, a species that had regained a kingdom in the planets around them that remained oddly detached from the Earth at present.

He saw the reinforced concrete doors, and felt not only the presence he was accustomed to feeling, the thing of Zarathrustra, the last of the remaining monsters to slay except for Titania and the Senshi of the Wind. He felt a Senshi, and of all Senshi, the little brat that had tried to beard him in his lair.

His eyes narrowed and in a sudden thought the door was hurled from its hinges, tossed high in the air and landing with a boom that he did not care about as he levitated down into the facility, unleashing a wave of destruction that carried with it all the technology that was forbidden to humans to access.

Sailor Venus and the monster waited, but Venus felt a sudden and sharp and painful stab of something she was not accustomed to feeling. Fear. Fear that all of this was futile, fear that she'd just endangered her life for nothing. The psychic presence was powerful, her nose bled from its sheer distorting weight and the thing in the cells was weeping-howling, shuddering, and then it hovered into her line of sight in the wake of the destructive gale. 

Hovered, and landed with a crunch that reflected both its heft and that of its armor.

The monster, the thing Michiru had described from her dreams, looked at her. He was clad in that strange armor like a flayed hide, with the helmet reflecting a skinned alien face with a visible look at the dentition of a creature. It was a horrid blend of super-science and the most atavistic things she'd read about distant cultures in America. Xipe Totec's priest yet it was not a flayed skin in truth but cunningly woven metal meant to make the creature like a demon even when demon it was not.

_**Why are you here?** _

That voice, that massive psionic battering ram echoed, echoed in perfect Japanese, and her nose bled more freely.

"To stop you," she hissed in determination.

_**By yourself? You are mighty, Venus, but not so mighty as that.** _

"Yes. I am the General of the Senshi, the strongest of the Inners, and you will not stop me!"

_**My dear, you're a witch deriving your magic from a planet. I can destroy the source of your power with a thought. I would destroy the monster you agreed to guard. Do not hinder me or you will suffer as grievously as did that entire force of primitives above.** _

With that the entity took his first step only for Venus to shout:

_Venus Love Me Chain!_

And her chain lanced out, wrapping itself around the thing's breastplate.

The alien froze, feeling the chain and its power, but his stare was not that of anger or concern, merely boredom.

 ** _Give me your best shot_** , he smiled, a savage grin of anticipation, and Venus in turn smiled.

"Gladly."

Her power, the healing power that was a dim second next to that of the Princess(es) surged through the chain. It was a blast that would have laid low a creature of Chaos. The light flashed and the monster behind her stopped howling, gazing at her with wonder, kneeling again. The light flashed and the souls of those rent by the creature's rampage were given a kind of peace and freedom that soothed them and let them pass on. The light flashed, illuminating the devastation of the Alkali Lake facility and the destroyed bodies of this Weapon X Program, and yet when it was done flashing the creature stood unharmed, and still bored.

 _ **Was that all?**_ The question was mocking and Venus's anger surged, but the creature simply flexed that horrid telekinetic power to unsnap her chain, knocking her off-balance, and looked at her with a snooty and aristocratic kind of annoyance.

The power that had wiped her mind before reached toward her and showed her that the creature did not need to add the theatrics of moving its hand, but sought to honor so famous an actor-singer-songwriter as Aino Minako (her eyes went very wide and a stab of deeper fear went through her at the realization of just what this thing knew) by giving her a display of power more like that in the movies. The right hand raised from its side, the pointer and middle fingers together, the rest clenched. A sudden smashing telekinetic force slammed into her, hurling her against the wreckage of one of the walls with a sickening crunch.

Content that V was out of the way, Yrvin Heshatani tore out the bars that held the monster, a thrumming kind of wind-like magick raised from its presence. Rubble moved in a kind of trail that showed that wind at work, but anchored by his powers, Lord Heshatani, the Architect of Fear, was unmoved.

 _ **None of you are even a fight,**_ he sighed. _**Pity the Senshi killed Iron Hands, though judging by Sailor V, I have nothing to fear from them. And less from you. From that thing in Central America, yes, not them.** _

With that his telekinetic power reached out and simply pushed on organs within the creature as his telepathy overloaded its synapses just in time for Sailor V to spring back with her sword gleaming with power, making a loud battle-cry.

Surprised, Yrvin Heshatani turned and raised his arm to form a telekinetic shield only for V's sword gleaming with her magic to cleave straight through it. He was further bemused until he saw something sparkling in her tiara that had not been there before. His eyes widened. The crystal of Venus, the center of her power. His tongue clicked against his teeth, an oddly human-like movement for so clearly inhuman a creature.

_**Well, I did say I wanted a fight.** _

The sword crunched into his greave, leaving a deep stroke in it. Keeping part of his telepathy working on killing the monster, Yrvin turned to face Venus.

He summoned a greater telekinetic shield around the damaged greave, even as Venus proved able to predict and dodge the elements of force he sent out. The flesh beneath the greave began to throb, the bone aching, and he snarled. Not a telepathic snarl but that of his true voice, inhumanly deep and reflecting vocal cords not of Earth nor of Earth's evolution.

He spoke in his true physical voice:

 _Felkakun nakazhro!_ <<Jackass supernormals.>>

With that he sought to strike at her mind telepathically as well.

For a moment Venus did not see a creature that was a being of a size large for a man but immensely stout with that chinless face, over-wide nose, and deep brow-ridged face with the sloping receding forehead but instead _Queen Beryl, mistress of the Dark Kingdom, and the sight startled her. Then she shook her head._

_"You can't be real!"_

_The sudden flash of memory of her body dying in the Arctic snows_ , and she growled, unleashing a single blast of her energy that lanced out toward 'Beryl' only to see the imagery fall and the presence of the being looming not apart from her but right next to her, and her body on her knees, bleeding from the mouth and the eyes as well as the nose, now.

_**I may be wrong about the threat you portend, especially with more than one of you together.** _

The gauntlet connected to the damaged greave brushed her cheek in a mockery of affection, the being smiling coldly.

_**But a threat is not enough, not here.** _

With that the telepathic power intensified and redness and darkness rose up to swallow her, even as the creature turned from her to the dying body of the thing in that facility. After it unleashed something like a greyish cloud and formed a spherical element of light that seemed to swallow the body, he turned back to the unconscious Venus, staring at her dispassionately.

He knelt in front of her and quietly removed her memories of what precisely she'd seen of his true form, then formed that same semicircle of nano-tech.

Rifling through her unconscious mind, he formed the image of a shrine where the Senshi gathered in the local primitive sect's superstitions. A useful bit of information to know for the future...and it was with a certain malicious glee that the monster placed her in his teleportation-portal.

HIKAWA SHRINE:

Hino Rei first knew how deeply she loved Aino Minako when she saw Sailor Venus materialize out of a sudden sphere of light in front of the shrine, bleeding from her nose and mouth and bloody tears from her eyes, her bow and skirt torn, and in a flash it was not the Miko but Sailor Mars who took her in her arms, flying to the Tsukino house. She hoped that Shingo and the family weren't home, or there would be....potentially awkward scenes.

TSUKINO HOUSEHOLD:

As it turned out, she needn't have worried about the Tsukino family sans Usagi. Shingo wanted to go to a friend's house for a visit, and so he did. Kenji and Ikuko were out enjoying a bit of husband-wife time. What she did not anticipate was that Osaka Naru opened the door to see Sailor Mars wide-eyed and terrified holding Sailor Venus and stared blankly, jaw moving slightly before turning to give a very unlady-like shout:

"Usagi, you need to come see this!"

It was when Usagi ran, tripping over herself in her hurry and picking herself up, to see who was at the door, took a sudden look, and double-take that was almost adorable in its way, and a blinding flash of light followed that Naru grasped the fullness of what this meant. Seeing at once that her friend was Sailor Moon, heroine by night who'd recently taken down a strange kind of monster like the kappa of Shinto lore only two nights prior, she just stood mutely as Moon knelt by Venus, taking out a Henshin. With that, her tiara, and her hairpieces glowing along with her right hand, healing energy flowed into Venus's body.

Her eyes seemed to fill out her sockets behind her lids a bit more, and the blood vanished from her body as though it had never been. Her breathing likewise changed, and she stirred, blinking drowsily.

"Wurrhappen?" Slurring slightly, she shook her head, then saw Usagi.

"Why am I here? I was supposed-"

It was then that she saw not only the television speaking of a horrid incident that happened in Alberta where a monster had attacked a facility and a flashing headline that drew the stupefied gaze and then double and then triple takes from the two Senshi and Naru.

"What?"

Moon's question was entirely sincere. The headline that flashed said:

"Sailor V believed dead in alien attack on scientific facility at Alkali Lake."

TENOH HARUKA'S RACING FACILITY, THE NEXT MORNING:

It was a weekend, thankfully, and Tenoh Haruka could focus on racing, not nightmares. Nor the question of those images and videos Kenji had shown her and which her mind kept going back to. She'd enjoyed thoroughly testing her new car, flying like the wind, and had just gotten out of a glorious two-hour bit of freedom when her agent stepped toward the track, fastidiously avoiding oil pools. Concerned slightly, Haruka left the car, and stepped over toward him. It was when she looked to his right and saw a stout and burly-built German who'd taken the world of communications technology by storm that she froze.

He, no....it was here. The thing from her dream.

Her agent smiled and said: "Mr. Christoffels here has been thinking of getting into sponsoring racecars. He's already gotten into talks with NASCAR to become one of the sponsors of Dale Earnhardt. You would be his first racer to sponsor in Japan."

Hiding her fear carefully (the glint of amusement in the 'German's' eyes indicated he knew exactly what she was feeling and thinking) she nodded. 

"How much?"

In a masterful bit of German that seemed somehow genuine human speech, the man spoke a sum that had her eyes bug out. That was......she blinked and nodded in a dazed fashion, not entirely sure of what she was doing. 

Her agent and the German beamed.

After that, it was a matter of talks and of the being that wasn't a man letting her shower and talking with her agent and a dizzying set of things leading up to the signing of that sponsorship. She tapped very consciously into the power that was Sailor Uranus to not drive home but run home, moving at a speed that made her a golden streak through Japan's cities and creating a brief windstorm.

When she knocked on the door, it was one knock and then to her further surprise it was not Michiru or Hotaru who opened the door to greet her, but a visibly concerned and worried Setsuna.

PHARAOH 90 INDUSTRIES, THAT EVENING: 

Seated on his command throne, Yrvin Heshatani satisfied himself that the damaged greave was not only fixed but that the armor resumed its proper appearance akin to muscle fibre, double and triple checking, before placing it down. His eyes looked outward.

There had been three entities on his target list left besides the one the Senshi had destroyed, and now....there were only two.

His gaze beneath the double-arched brown turned ponderously to the images of Sailor Titania, shown fighting a creature in Australia, a demonic creature of the fouler elements of the Dreamtime called a Burrunjor, and to Sailor Uranus.

Lord Pharaoh 90 smiled. Only two targets left, and one of them knew he would come for her, eventually. She'd escaped him once, as had Iron Hands.

He was in no rush, not now. Not when he was able to reap the result of years of hard work both levelling creatures that were never meant to exist, recovering the Shaper Apparatus, and making his Daimons. Not when, though the encounter in Central America had humbled him enough, as had that in Vorkuta, and the recognition from Sailor V that a Senshi with access to her crystal could with sufficient experience shatter his shields were grounds for caution, he was the mightiest being on the Earth and in this entire Solar System.

At her baseline level, Usagi Tsukino, the little girl who'd just entered high school and was the princess of the planetary empire and its future queen, was able to work on a planetary scale. At his true peak, he could force the star these planets orbited to die prematurely by psionic distortion of the atomic power, telescoping billions of years into as short or long a time as he wished. It would strain him, he would need to place his ship on autopilot and coast in space for a time as he rested and healed, but that was what he could do. Only the very direct power of Chaos in the form of the thing in the shroud and whatever had reached through the witch in Central America had matched him in raw destructive force. More than matched him, had exceeded him.

He was not, in full truth, fearful of any of the Senshi, even the little giggling idiot with her bun-heads. Only the very power that was greater by far than any one Senshi, even the mightiest of the breed, astronomically so in the case of the ones here made his power small.

Years of slumming as a species he was not, slumming his way to world-tier wealth, power, and a means to keep track on one of his quarry.

Years of working his schemes while a dead empire had sprung briefly back to life and then been banished in Arctic snows and one of his quarry had seemingly been eliminated only to return to life, something that had never happened with any of the other quarry he'd sought. A difference that made him the more intent on finding a means to ensure, doubly and triply, that when he finished his tasks that it would be with her alone and isolated, and him triumphant.

Years of leaving civilization and a life of actual challenge and risk in an uncaring multiverse where terrible entities bestrode it with power that casually rippled through multiverses in their wake, waging inscrutable wars and battles that left mortals, even at his kind's tier, but the collateral damage of the true lords of creation, for this.

He left the command throne and looked out across the Tokyo skyline and across the expanse of Tokyo Bay.

Years of all of this, of ensuring that the job he'd left partially undone had been fully so, and now, at last, that the endgame had come he could afford not to rush, nor to feel rushed.

He smiled, a different kind of smile, and opened the window, glorying in the dead of night and in his ability to use his powers to veil himself from the sight and awareness of mortals. Opened the window and with his telekinesis granting him a good approximation of true flight, levitated out, feeling the coolness of the wind. How ironic, that coolness and its pleasure, when his last task would be to break the power of what humanity had cracked, partially, so that it could be spared the risks he was poised to teach them. He levitated above the street and the skyline, having a bird's eye view of everything in Tokyo, and then in a single calculated risk asserted his will to brush the minds of the entire human race at once.

His shot across the bow rippled in the daylight half of the world as a terrible awareness that a monstrously powerful invasive presence bored into minds. Those mystics who were trained in the arts and concepts of metaphysical shielding knew more than most the kind of thing that rippled out. Unshielded minds shuddered, the more sensitive seeing the glimpse of a smiling dark face with reddish blotches like clawmarks down the face and bright white teeth and two golden animal-eyes beneath a w-shaped brow-ridge. Those minds that could shield felt their shields shattered brutally, no finesse, just sheer unimaginable power. Naked, merciless force.

In the nighttime, the Senshi all shared a singular dream and image.

_All of them, even Titania, were gathered together. Not in or around Pharaoh 90 Industries, but in front of the Hikawa Shrine._

_They were all transformed, and each of them looked at the other, for each dreamed individually and together, and this was a thing they were unprepared for (but a thing that Nehellennia would rue when Galaxia's interests turned to the Earth and she sent her dark power with the Dream-Queen as a warning)._

_As before, the foe strode to the shrine, but he strode not in his true battle armor but in a gaudier thing with a cape extending, no helm._

_They saw the burly creature with its Neanderthaloid face and shining white-toothed grin and his yellow eyes, and he spoke to them not in the tongue of Japanese but that of the old Silver Millennium:_

_**I see you. I know you, all of you. Who you are, what you are. What is your family and what is not.** _

_**Soon, I shall come to you, and I shall come with great vengeance and furious anger, and you shall know that I am the Architect of Fear when I shall lay low mountains and raise valleys. I shall come not as a thief in the night but as a comet in the night sky, and there shall be nothing you can do to stop me.** _

_Then he laughed, an inhuman laugh that was somewhere between wheezing and grunting and the vision rippled away, though the link so casually forged remained in spite of it. Michiru looked in utter fear at Haruka, and moved to her, and stood in front of her protectively._

_"Over my dead body!"_

That laughter returned louder, like drumbeats mixed with thunder peals. and then faded away into an endless empty silence.

The Senshi awoke and that same presence was seemingly there in the room with them, seeing them, knowing their minds and their secrets like the brooding weight of the oceanic depths and just as lightless and monstrous, and dreams across the nightime portion of the world were troubled with visions of a terrible creature that was neither beast nor man but some horrid demon from beyond the stars with glowing golden eyes and flesh of charcoal and a language of beauty spoken in a bestial and menacing fashion.

Over Tokyo, a strange kind of aurora-nebula like thing flared into existence with a hallucinogenic kind of light, and twenty burning stars fell to the Earth. Each of the objects was glowing with the heat of planetfall but they were a rough and unburnished iron, bar hazard stripes and the twin symbolism of the Latin number IV, and a great iron skull. The Iron Warriors of Squad Bulgaroktonos were reported lost to the Legion in the mishap surrounding the onslaught on the Ork-world in the War of the Beast in Terran Orbit from a mishap in Warp engines.

It was their presence and the sudden and dramatic illustration of Psyker power that the xenos monster had done worldwide as much as anything else that accounted for a second teleportation flare that glowed with a brilliant golden hue and brought with it a stout and burly seeming man whose face for a moment shifted and moved from appearance to appearance save that his eyes were a glowing psychic hue of burning gold, and with him, a pale woman clad in black with black lipstick and a mark on her eye, a mark that time and time's sorrows would lead her to psionically occlude well before the far future when the Warmaster's rebellion brought him to her life with a planetfall of burning ships from orbit. They stepped out of the portal into a Tokyo night, near the waterfront, where a building near a school contained a presence that was monstrously powerful and though veiled from the eyes of most mortals, fully visible to the Emperor, who looked at it with a mixture of stupefaction, his hand moving to clasp a scabbard that did not exist out of muscle memory, and then around him, grasping in a millisecond that the same presence was that which had reached around the world with a grip of iron.

Alivia looked at her companion with a cold look of distaste. Few things did she regret so dearly in life as when she'd tried to leave Him for John, only for John to leave her buried in rubble in Kabul and Him to find her. She would try again soon, she knew it. The Senshi had revealed magic and monsters, though a purer, holier kind than anything connected to her companion. Then a single powerful Psyker force had reached from the depths of space and made its presence on the Earth known, forcing its way into minds with the unsubtle and unlovely force that it made her companion seem a kindly and genteel soul by comparison. Yes.......the perfect time to try, to try and to use His blind spots.

The Iron Warriors made planetfall on the snowbound slopes of Mount Asama, twenty drop pods dotting it with charred rubble like the mountain developed a patch of stubble.


	40. The Shadow on the Moon at Night:

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As Lord Pharaoh 90, the Architect of Fear, begins to lay his trap, the Senshi encounter the first of his Daemons. Setsuna Meioh makes a new and old acquaintance, and Sailor Moon reaches a new form.

JUUBAN HIGH:

The first thing that made the attack unusual for the Senshi was that it was the night after the strange events when a telepathic presence had reached around the world and brushed every single mind with a demonstration that it was capable of the feat. Sensitives worldwide were far more fearful, describing the discovery of an alien intelligence of stunning and surpassing power, a being that was perhaps connected to the worldwide sequence of assaults that had seen a fearfully powerful force strike that had even managed to face no less of the Senshi than Sailor V, their most experienced member, and had fought her on more than an equal footing.

They were in high school, all of them, and it was lunchtime. By a quirk of fate, all of the Senshi save Setsuna not only went to the same school, but managed to wind up with the same lunch and the same table. Haruka and Kenji sat close together but at the edge of the group, and the tension there between herself and Michiru was visible. Then they all froze. The Great Enemy's presence was obvious, a thing of terrible power and a malignancy that even mortals could see. This one......it made itself known when a winded, visibly exhausted Tenoh Haruka ran into the cafeteria, and suddenly the school was quiet, as all eyes turned to the being that sat by the group of girls, as it noticed that.

When the being's smile widened, the cheeks vanishing and transforming into a triangular shape the pandemonium began, students fleeing. They knew of Youma, and they did not know how or why one was able to appear as Tenoh Haruka, and none witnessed the simultaneous flash of eight points of light, which left eight Senshi, among them Sailor Moon, and Sailor Uranus, who moved on the other door from where she was, as the creature levitated into the air, twin eyes transforming from normal-seeming hazel to brilliant pools of fire, the skin transforming from a Japanese girl's hue to a reddish one akin to blood or muscle, objects swirling around the room.

"Mercury, do you have any idea what this is?" That was Venus, whose shout was the professional and stern one of Sailor V, not that of public-school attending entertainment prodigy Aino Minako. 

"It's not a Youma, I can't read its energy signals."

The other Senshi looked as the tables were hurled around, windows shattered, though the creature as yet did nothing to them. Mercury formed her fogbank shielding the cafeteria and aiming to shield the Senshi and then the blazing light of the creature's eyes burned in the fog and the daemon roared, an inhuman sound, at timbres no human throat could make. In a sudden rush of tremendous speed Venus was struck with a blow that tossed her through a window, Mercury seeking to deepen the fog yet the creature's glow intensified.

Between them Uranus and Jupiter sought to entrap it in a blend of a cyclone ridden with lightning and the creature roared again, with an element of pain in the sound. The light dimmed for a second, and then the telekinetic power that had been directed at the tables slammed into the Senshi with an impact of invisible force of brutish power that left the wall of the cafeteria a fragile thing and launched them through into the courtyard, the fog dispersed. They could not see the entity, nor could they track it as they could Youma, or the Daimons of the Black Moon Clan.

Jupiter and Uranus came at it from both sides, one wielding the Space Sword, the other the elemental power of the thunderstorm, and the impact of the two strongest Senshi did stop the being in its tracks, as it began to focus power on fending them both off, creating telekinetic shields that blocked the lightning bolts of Jupiter that deranged electronics and blocking the blade of Uranus with its wrist, even if the blade left visible grooves. Eventually, as the two Senshi moved in a blend of brute force and speed, the creature scented an opportunity when Uranus overbalanced with a strike and whirled in a strike that left her hurled against a wall with a sickening crunch.

Neptune moved next, the briny odor of the ocean pervading as she raised her mirror and blasts of her power with its salt-ridden air slammed into the creature, four. One in the chest, two in the face, one on the jaw and at the blazing eyes, a fourth on its right hand. The blasts drove it to its knees, and then it roared again and summoned another massive blast of telekinetic power, the invisible force moving like a battering ram that scattered all of the Senshi save for the last and only one standing. Moon.

It strode toward her and no longer looked even as human as it had before. It was now tall and rangy, limbs over-long and fingers over-long with them, cheekbones sharp and concave, chin a thin and receding feature. Its teeth retained that sharp and fringed element and where it had had two eyes now it had eight, of which three were massive and the rest smaller, the eyes blinking and moving in different directions.

Sailor Moon looked determined and then shouted:

Moon Healing Escalation!

The blast struck the monster and hurled it back, for the first time fully knocking it off of its feet, hurling it back against the wall. It rose, its limbs trembling, and snarled, the effect producing a kind of sonic distortion before it.

As it began to move forward, Sailor Pluto appeared as if out of nowhere, and her talisman connected to those of the unconscious Uranus and Neptune, the telekinetic power of the creature having moved each other. With that impact a strange and wondrous thing happened. A golden cup with rubies adorning its edge and its base, and wings on its edge appeared in front of her and Sailor Moon grasped it. Her outfit changed, her bow shrinking, golden hues appearing where there had not been any such elements on her fuku, and then she turned and unleashed a new attack.

Moon Spiral Heart Attack!

In a sudden whirling flash of energy a blast shaped like a heart hurled toward the monster, which cocked its head in curiosity, and then the attack slammed into it, and it howled at a deeper level, the attack unmaking its essence at the very material level.

With that the Senshi looked at each other, and at the ruin of the cafeteria, the tables shattered and the building barely standing up. Moon strode up to it and with a light move of her crystal the damage to the building was repaired, as she refused to leave that kind of danger behind her.

Classes were canceled, and the parents thronged the school.

Up to this point, attacks on schools in Japan had been very rare, but here had been attack that was no spree shooter as in the United States, nor an army at war. A monster had infiltrated the school disguised as one of the students, one of the most prominent people in the younger generation of Japan no less, and only the collective presence of the Sailor Senshi had deterred it.

In the wake of the previous night's events, the attack led both Tenoh Haruka and Kaioh Michiru to be given bodyguards at their visible annoyance and the insistence of their agents, and to a new and hitherto unprecedented step.

The similarity of the attack, of its MO, and the way the creature did what it did and the resemblances to elements of the being reportedly behind the attacks on global military installations was too much a coincidence to be casual.

The Prime Minister of Japan made a formal overture to the Diet of Japan, asking for the first use of the Self Defense Forces as an active military force. A quiet warning from the United States and Canadian militaries that even use of the most powerful thermonuclear weaponry had not worked did not deter the Prime Minister. The world had had its first verifiable proof of at best superhuman powers on a scale that were akin to Sailors Moon and Venus, and at worst much else. And that power had recurred again in a lesser form in a school in the heart of Tokyo.

To thunderous applause the Prime Minister invoked that power and then declared martial law in Tokyo, from which only the Senshi, who alone seemed to have something of an ability to fight and survive the monster with a guarantee, would be exempted.

In Pharaoh 90 Industries, the Architect of Fear looked out the window, his eyes shining with their true non-human hue.

Under the new martial law Japan had a sundown curfew, so that new monsters that stalked the streets at night would be targeted and shot at. Public travel would be strictly prohibited and the writ of law would be within the purview of the Prime Minister, and in a step that called back to the older days before the Second World War, the public role of the Emperor was greatly strengthened for the first time in decades. The Architect of Fear could see armored personnel carriers moving through the streets as twilight set. The streets were empty.

And so the stage is set.

OUTER SENSHI HOUSE:

The night had passed silently. No dreams or premonitions troubled Sailor Neptune, a thing that in itself she found worrisome, as if some malignant power was reaching out to try to suppress power. Kenji had de facto moved in with them and for the first time, too, Kaiou Michiru did not object to its presence, a thing that everyone else in the house found worrisome. She remembered all too well the force in her dreams, the diabolical force of nature that was vaguely humanoid but compressed within it the power to shatter planets by sheer brutish willpower, that force that killed Haruka. If Haruka chose to still defy her destiny to the bitter end, she wanted her to be as happy as it was possible for her to be.

The presence that had reached out to her, to all of them, had been the thing from her dream, she knew it. She suspected with a horrifying fascination that it was connected to the alien monster that had the factories and the school. Only Kenji, Venus, and she knew the fuller extent of all this, but now......now, the monster had struck, and then it had sent a creature, its equivalent of a Youma to the school. _It knew who all of them were._ No dreams for Sailor Neptune, because the fear, the sheer existential fear of a thing that had become a mirror of her own Haruka that had not been easily seen at the start as what it was, or how it would be, that had power to mask itself and the sudden appearance of its presence to a point that they could not tell it from one of their own, that she could not tell her soulmate from a monster that had fought them all together as more than equal......

No, no sleep that night. A long night, alone. Alone and staring into the darkness with her hands around her legs.

The sun had risen and even under martial law, those in Tokyo who had essential business to conduct could still do so. So it was in that context that their doorbell rang. Once, twice.

The Scouts looked out, Kenji in the kitchen fixing breakfast and frozen.

What surprised them all was the calmness with which Meioh Setsuna, who blended studying astrophysics with dabbling in fashion but wore sweatpants and a tank top around the house, strode forward with a look of surprise on her face. The Senshi of Time was a woman of many faces and many feelings. Surprise was almost never one of them. but it was there.

At the door was a woman of ageless appearance, seemingly. She was rangy and thin but had the hardened look of a killer, someone very adept at it, at that. A look that had been why Kenji had taken one look at her and ducked out of her line of sight. She was pale, very pale, almost unnaturally so. The kind of pallor that fit someone who had spent decades buried beneath the ground but no healthy appearance of a normal human being. She was clad in a black t-shirt, black pants, black shoes.

Meioh Setsuna strode to the door and to their further surprise opened it.

Then spoke:

"Alivia? Why are you here?"

"Rhetorical questions, Pluto? Really?" To their surprise the pale woman of indeterminate ancestry whose features were not quite like any culture known to this Earth as it was simply snorted and then stepped through the door, and it was her who closed it, locked it. Went around to check windows like she was checking for line of sight.

Setsuna simply sighed, pinching her nose.

"You left Him again, didn't you?"

"I didn't choose to be with him, Meiou, not then. Not when your kingdom fell those thousands of years ago. I didn't choose to be with him now. If John hadn't left me buried under a ton of rock when a Soviet artillery strike hit Kabul, I wouldn't be with him."

Setsuna pinched her nose again as Alivia Sureka returned.

"He's here for the same reason I am. Your little friend in that building."

Setsuna's hand moved from her nose to her side and she made to grab her Henshin as if by instinct.

"That bad?"

"It's not what you'd call good, no."

"Then why are you avoiding Him?"

"You know exactly why, Time-Senshi. You know exactly why." Her lips were pursed and her teeth grit against each other.

"That said, you have a xenos loose on Earth. A powerful one. At first, He thought it was just a thing of Chaos that happened to be good at disguising what it was. Perhaps a thing of the Lord of Change. It's not. It's a xenos Psyker, and a deadly one, one that matches the raw power of something He only refers to as the 'Dragon.' "

Those sentences made no sense to anyone else standing and listening in rapt fascination, but Setsuna's reaction to the last words and the quaver in Sureka's own meant that the Senshi tensed. Nothing that made Pluto, Guardian of Time and the Doors of Night afraid could be a good thing.

"You're telling me that whatever's in Pharaoh 90 Industries matches a Shard?"

"At least. He thinks it's hiding power that's potentially a little greater. He beat the Dragon but it was a thing weak to the power of the Warp, a thing that could be predicted, could be fought."

"And this thing?"

"He thinks it's a thing from another dimension entirely, obeying no laws known to the Senshi or to.....to our group."

Setsuna's pallor had the tension at a higher level before Tenoh Hotaru asked a simple question:

"Please pardon me for asking, but....who are you?"

The ageless being with eyes that were ancient and had seen much and much that was not good at that turned to her. She froze.

"My name is Alivia Sureka. You would not believe my answer if I told you."

Kenji timidly spoke up.

"They're all Sailor Senshi, I'm fairly sure they'd believe anything at this point."

Alivia Sureka froze and cocked her head, her empathy reading a set of emotions and her eyes widening, both eyebrows raised, and her mouth in the shape of a small 'o'.

"Very well. Since you asked. Might want to get a set there, buddy, it's a bit of a tale."

With that Kenji rushed with somewhat indecent haste and hid behind the four Senshi, though none could quite fault the baseline human for being afraid of something that had a Senshi that had the most wide-ranging power and the longest experience in using it (though not in this form, or in this shape, for each of her incarnations had to learn what her ageless self always knew) continually reacting with elements distinct to her usual.

With that, Alivia sat, a satchel strapped to her back moving from a careful use of one of the few talents she had beyond empathy into full vision and set down by her. By her side that book would endure for tens of thousands of years, to a world called Molech, to the Siege of Terra, and beyond. And among its manifold tales would be the Rabbit of the Moon, soldier of love and justice, and her Ten Companions, The Eleven Against the Great Nothignness. Few would be the tales in her book that Sureka's long life would participate in directly. She had not taken the field like this since old days, the days when she had served the Great King at Artemisia and in the form of Queen of Halicarnassus encountered Him again after that blessed period of absence.

Of course there usually wasn't an Alpha-plus Psyker equivalent who had no power rooted in the Warp or any known element to them from the Silver Millennium, the present, or her....companion's.....vision running around Earth, for it was still Earth now. Not the future hellscape warred over by abominations such as Him, or Kalagann of Ursh, Narthan Dume, and the Ethnarchs. In all His visions, He'd said that the first contacts with alien races came a few years later when the entity that called itself Sailor Galaxia made planetfall and in its coming would achieve a feat that the greatest efforts of He Who Was to Come would try to do but fall short of. Only their absence from Earth and discovery of Galaxia's rampage across the stars, and that one of the planets she would come to last before coming to the Earth itself was no less a world than _that_ one and what her arrival had awoken there would save them from undergoing the ritual of their order.

Oll would never remember his death, though John and Damon were off-world.

It was not often that His visions failed, but never had they failed so badly as this.

She'd woolgathered for a few minutes but it worked to everyone's benefits as the Senshi were calmer and the random baseline human was calm, too. Surprisingly so, and even a rational thinker to boot. given he reacted with fear where it was appropriate and didn't try to puff up his ego at the expense of other things. She briefly gave him a more appraising stare and then Tenoh Haruka as well. If she was going to try to buck the harsh will of fate, she could have chosen much worse.

Shrugging imperceptibly, Alivia began to tell them a tale, omitting those elements that she knew Meiou Setsuna would have said to not tell.


	41. Stories and Monsters:

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alivia Sureka tells a tale of years that were, that are, and that will be to the Outer Senshi. 
> 
> Sailor Titania encounters a monster and makes a decision.

THE OUTER SENSHI HOUSE: 

"In the beginning, at the very dawn of all things that ever were or will ever be, there were two groups of.....the kind of entities that we are, and shall become. One, my kind, call ourselves Perpetuals. As with you, we can only truly be slain by a very few things. Our bodies may be destroyed but we forge ourselves new ones, sometimes in times and places of our choosing, others rather less so. We, or so we believe, arose first but then we would, wouldn't we? Always such foolish prestige in being them who came before and so little gained by it." 

She shrugged. 

"Of us all the first, as far as we know, of them still living is Oliver. That's what he calls himself now, I believe. I last saw him........I last saw him in Passchendaele." 

Of them all it was Hotaru, who had done the most reading on various periods of history who stiffened, her eyebrow raised. 

"Beyond that, there was me, born in a distant time, long ago. A realm that we called Arcadia, and that the inhabitants of the land called themselves people of the Black Hair. My father-in-law called himself Nuwah, my husband was Yepet. We lived in a world where there were monsters, monsters that called themselves Gods. By a strange circumstance, one of a set of terrible entities of the distant future was worshiped then, by name, in the area. And it was given its specialties, no less, too. An incautious sorcerer invoked a power not especially beholden to such things to banish it, but woe to them who call upon the Great, be they the entities that lurk in the Necropolis at the heart of Earth, be it metaphorical and in realm of fiction, or all too literal. And woe greater to them who can invoke such power even where it is the former, for such was a case here. A sorcerer of stunning strength, that one. He called a power through a hole in time and granted it a residence here, seemed to.....to transform the world. But for the price of invoking the Dark Dreamer to banish newer and more malignant things Arcadia drowned. 

Then I was in a.....bond. A marriage. Tied to Him. I died, for the first time, then. I am not sure if He did or if He was even truly there, if it wasn't the very first of the many betrayals that I have known. But when I awoke the fountains of the Deep had subsided and for not the first or the last time I was in a new set of flesh, rangier and thinner, for the flesh may be regenerated and starvation become a loop without end." 

Her eyes were haunted. "Our child drowned. As far as I know, that was the only one of His children and He saw me holding our son, when the waters subsided, weeping and crying as I held stinking rags with bones in them, and He looked at me and His hand went on my shoulder and the rest....was silence. It was not long after that fact that the entities that built the Golden Years, Queen Luna, and the first generation of the Senshi arose. 

Our power is that of the soul to re-embody itself at will. Yours is....more indirect. You rely on something called Star-Seed. It is your soul, the very thing that makes you yourself. If the body were to be destroyed in a way your Crystals could not repair, to the Galaxy Cauldron they would go, to repair and to renew and to rebuild. Like us, you possessed power, and it was under Queen Luna's power and her creation and consolidation of the Golden Kingdom in brutal clashes with various beings that lived in an age of magic that the new era arose. With her, there were beings she called Guardians, beings that had power akin to hers, derived from hers to a degree, but specializing in their own. Stoic Mercury, Guardian with the power to perceive patterns, threats, and to make decisions in a way that bypassed all others. Strength not in brute force destruction but in thought. 

Venus, the General, brutal and cruel and as in that time sustaining discipline by the flat, or sometimes the blade, of the sword. 

Mars, the Fire-Seer, and the Guardian of War, from ancient Bar'Soom, for in her there are but two elements that make her the most dangerous of all Warriors. She sees through its chaos and wrath perfectly in a way even He cannot. 

Jupiter of the Thunders, the Guardian of Protection, to whom Jovian lighting is her due and to whom is given the greatest brute force. Of all the Senshi she is the one that He feared most. 

Saturn, Guardian of Death and of Rebirth, the one He feared next, for she could unmake worlds and remake them without the effects He perceived alone, and He does not handle well what He cannot control. 

Uranus, Guardian of the Skies, Mistress of the Seven Winds, Blade of the Stars. 

Neptune, Guardian of Elegance, who is Ocean in its depths, its power...and sometimes its sheer brute force, Mirror of the Soul. 

And you, Pluto, or I should say, your mother. A lovely woman, Guardian of Time itself, and wife to a kind of entity He said did not exist, but where each of you proves Him wrong. Each of you have lineages that are not truly human, connected to civilizations that shared a form but not a soul with the sons of Terra. 

It was under this Golden Age that Damon, John, and the others would awaken and gain their power. Damon is a monster, he serves in every war he can for the sake of the killing. 

John........I left Him for a long time, after the fall of the Silver Millennium. I spent that time as a being of war and its great desolations. Artemisia, Boudicca, Jeanne D'Arc, a general who led wars. Like Him, in that sense. I suppose it's why He keeps being drawn to me, for He seeks those like him. 

And another, Nerthus, whom wedded Him and due to that, I felt still less guilt for it seemed He had confirmed me right that He never truly needed nor wanted me, merely an idea of me. Unlike me, her power is closest to His of all of us, but it is an atom bomb next to the heart of the star. 

We have existed, all of us lesser ones, in His shadow. He has a name, and I knew it then, in the first days where we both children. Perwkunos, the Storm-Lord." 

She bit her lip. 

"A name He earned, for His is the power of Storm, not the way that Jupiter of the Thunders wields it. He is Surtr, He is Typhon, He is the Morningstar. His the sword of humanity's ruin, and I could see that, a long time ago, when I spoke to Mars, the first Mars, of the Golden Age and she showed me. A distant deep future where the great Guardians perished in a sudden cataclysm, when the things they made architects of humanity's future turned against them." 

Pluto and Neptune for a moment knew a sudden flash. A giant swollen with a power steeped in blood and souls, head glowing with golden light, adorned with three horns that extended at different lengths, the front one shorter than the back two. The great mace, and the statements _I am the Bearer of the Word, and in this, there is fulfillment._

"Your mothers knew of him, so did you, in the Second Age, the Silver Millennium. He is why Terra was never allowed in the Silver Alliance. Not a Guardian, but with power to snuff out stars with a thought, to pull time and space apart with ease. His powers were undeniably great and effective in containing the Outer Darkness, but He has always been gifted in war and war's savagery and war's customs. It is His power, and His great blessing, and reality's great curse. He views the existence of the alien as a threat, though in all fairness what brings Him to power is such that even though He has more....complex views.....humanity as a whole would die in fire if He did not. 

He told me that it is not now that humanity was to come into contact with full awareness of aliens. Not the beings of the restored Lunar Kingdom that glory in the successes of their Princesses, the truer alien. Such an entity will come and in the wake of that cataclysm there would come a time of utopia, and of humanity's expansion into the great stars. Now....." 

She stared into the distance for a moment. 

"What has happened now was never in His visions. And He told me thus. A monster, a powerful Xenos with the ability to reach into minds around the world, and it is my belief that such a thing...."

It was then that they all heard the door knock, and all jumped, time having frozen and compressed itself into Alivia's story. The knock was powerful, only the Senshi magic coded into the very framework of the house meant that it did not take it down. 

FIFTY MINUTES EARLIER: 

Sailor Titania had become a roving presence around the world in the wake of the clashes with the Black Moon clan. A Guardian without a title, given a new soul and no idea what to do with it, she had become much closer to the ideal of the superhero, even changing her outfit, at one level, to that of a thing akin to the Roman Lorica Segmata but a brilliant turquoise hue. She had fought monsters, and crime, and fought against her secret worries. And then two nights ago she'd felt it. _Him._ The fell power bound into a form akin to that of a man yet horribly distinct, golden-eyed and smiling with bloody-marked cheeks, after a fashion. Those clawmarks and that smile had terrified her and she'd escaped. So too had her sister, Subject Two, that entity that had fallen upon herself and the other Senshi with that horrid giggle: 

_Eat you, eat your cities, eat your children, eating life, shitting skulls! The creature had laughed and hurled itself at them and done so with a glassy-eyed look, like the eyes of a doll or a shark, and in that furious few minutes of terror and danger.....she had died. And now there were but two of them._

Two of them. She knew what was attacking those facilities, to a degree. More than anyone else, even Haruka, Subject One, the Perfect One, she knew elements of it. She knew that she, and that Uranus, were on borrowed time, they were the last of the children of Zarathrustra and in that reality the thing that called itself Pharaoh 90 the Architect of Fear, it would come for them. 

She was flying, in this case, over a region of the Kanto Plain where there had been a strange star-fall that same night. She had found fourteen strange ships that dotted a mountain and left blackened rubble, and bootsteps that were heavy. The pods were like great burst boils on the mountain, the bootprints were massive. The things that left them had to weigh a ton, minimum, and yet they moved at a speed that nothing that size could move. And what, what manner of strange entity that size could even wear boots? Why _the_ skull? Why the charred hazard stripes, the Roman numeral IV, the pseudo-Greek writing? She remained hovering but then she sensed it. Alone among the Senshi she had touched the power of Chaos in both its forms. The ever-shifting power and madness that lay behind the Veil appeared as each force that saw it expected to see, at points, but it was also a thing that could work at other levels. What she had touched, what was unknown to her laying the Galaxy waste, was Chaos Undivided. 

There were four shards beneath that, Decay-Excess-Slaughter-Change. 

And all of this was the mirror of the evil things, yet its power, to a lesser degree, was within her still and it enhanced her. Gave her senses, powers, that other Senshi did not have. Such as the power to sense the thing that was trying to ambush her from above, her sword appearing in her hand, and to hurl the sword straight into its chest, the impact echoing with a booming thunderclap and hurling it down the mountain. 

It did not appear to her in a more humanoid form as the entity she would learn had appeared in the school and explained the....other changes...in Japan had. It was a being of bloody-hued skin with glowing eyes and shrieking inhuman bellows. It was a being that moved with a speed that the other Senshi would have struggled to see save in the direct moments before impact when their speed would have saved them from true ruin but it was slow to her, within a fashion. It moved in a springing leap with arms outstretched, and to her surprise they became scaled and clawed, wicked edges that looked like miniature serrated knives of deep black hue gleaming with solar glare from the claws. It lunged at her and her sword flashed out against the claws, followed by a sudden punch enhanced by that second, secret set of abilities she tried to veil from the other Senshi. They did not need reminders of what she had been. 

The stupendous strength slammed into the creature's nose, bursting it, and hurled shards of bone with it, launching it on its back. She stood triumphantly, raising her sword, then her eyes bugged out. The bones were resetting, the nose healing, and the creature smiled. 

_You and are alike,_ it spoke, suddenly, spoke in the tongue she'd absorbed in the Tubes before learning Japanese and other speech. 

_You and I are alike, we were made by monsters. We are monsters._

Then the creature, fully regenerated, sprang up still in that slowness and it grasped her in one arm, raising her with its right hand as the left drew back in a fist. 

_Mine was the stronger monster, so he had less fear to give me greater power._

Then the thing's fist hurled out and her wind was knocked out of her, as she was blasted far down the mountain, near to its edge and the impact echoed with a stupendous booming sound. 

The creature levitated down, arrogantly, Titania led to desperation. She did not like to do this, it was a weapon of last resort but if she did not, this thing could get near to the region of Tokyo itself and what horrors could ensue there.....

Her eyes began to glow with a kaleidoscopic light and the creature cocked its head, as it swelled and grew and began to form blades, the better to butcher her with. That same kaleidoscopic light grew around her hands and then hurled out in a single surpassing strike that echoed into the creature's body, gleamed, and caused it to seemingly fracture on lines akin to the hard Earth of deserts. 

All it could do was state a brief: Oh. 

And then in that same blast, a force of kaleidoscopic power made the creature erupt in a ball of multi-colored light, leaving a vast crater on the mountainside. 

Titania slipped into a brief slumber, the use of such power and the impact of the creature's blow catching up to her. Fifty minutes later she'd teleported to the Outer Senshi's collective house, where she had a guest room. She was shaken, fearful, exhausted, and then her fist slammed into the door with a power that absent the reinforcement of Pluto and Saturn would have shattered the house like an ill-tempered giant's kick. 

Not long thereafter, it was to her open surprise Pluto who opened the door, still in her civilian identity. 

"Where's Haruka? We need to talk." 

Pluto pointed in and Titania stepped in, not even bothering to de-transform. Even if that weirdo that was in the house sometimes was th-she froze. The other Senshi were on the couch, various emotions merged into their faces in a perfect illustration of human facial features that made her wish she had one of those Sim devices to pose it for posterity. And their eyes moved from her....and her eyes followed them to a woman, thin but surprisingly beautiful for all that. Skin astonishingly pale, near-white, and her body had that kind of unhealthy skeletal element connected with starvation or those concepts that were hidden but terrible secrets. Eating disorders. Her hair was dark, her eyes also dark, and there was a strange squiggle beneath one eye, a tattoo on her inner wrist in a symbol that made no sense. A pyramid in a column with an eye over it and words that began with 'i'. 

"Who the Hell are you?" 

Everyone on the couch turned to her at once. "Very long story" they said, not in perfect chorus by any means, weirdo guy saying it with an awkward laugh and a high giggle at the end, eye twitching spastically. She shrugged visibly. Weird people were like that. 

"Haruka? We need to talk. Not here, the Shrine. This is Senshi business, for all of us, and I think we need to discuss it here as otherwise, whatever sent a monster after me and hit the world, telepathically, will come after us in a worse fashion." 

Their eyes widened. 

"It sent something after you too?" 

She blinked. "Too?" 

"You didn't notice the martial law?" 

"Oh I noticed that, but since I'm in Senshi mode more it doesn't bother me so much. What do you mean, too?" 

"A monster snuck into our school and pretended to be Haruka at lunchtime. It....transformed. We fought, we wrecked a portion of the school in the process....but the monster's gone. That's as much it as the telepathy." 

"Well fuck me." 

With that, the Senshi looked at each other for a few minutes in another set of masterpieces of the blends of awkward and uncertain facial expressions, while Kenji decided he'd just go back to playing a game on his Sim rather than provoking the scary immortal psychic woman who was looking at the rest of them, even as Setsuna messaged the other Senshi to meet at the Shrine. 

Within fifteen minutes the ten Senshi, Tuxedo Kamen, and to their visible surprise and disconcertion, the pale woman clad in black who'd arrived with the Outers, were all assembled. They did not transform fully, merely using the Senshi powers of teleportation and flight to make to the Shrine in record time, but their eyes were fully on Titania, whose appearance displayed...concern, in a visible sense, that had not really been seen on her face save once before, when the entity that had revealed itself had been referenced (as would be clear in retrospect). 

"Well?" It was Aino who asked that question, the mask of the idol with her innate silliness discarded for Venus even without her transformation. "Why are we here?"

"I will caution you that I don't know much about this beyond what I saw, and what I heard, but......what do you know of Project Zarathrustra?" 


	42. Secrets Uncovered, Murder most foul, and Squad Bulgaroktonos comes to Tokyo:

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Iron Warriors squad that hid in the forest makes its first contact with the distant past of old Earth with a very bemused Self-Defense Force patrol. Kenji discovers that Lord Pharaoh 90 is unforgiving of those who even partially subvert his powers, and the Senshi begin to uncover the grim secrets of Project Zarathrustra.

HIKAWA SHRINE:

"This is not a pleasant tale, and I think to begin with it would be easiest if we went to the Lunar Palace. To that room that must see seldom use in a land of immortals."

"The Palace?" It was Sailor Moon herself who started. "Why?"

"This is most easily begun with what I must show you. They won't make you serve as Princess, Moon. You will do that in your own time if you do it at all."

"Ooookkkaaayyyy." As Alivia Sureka cocked her head, she shrugged, removing from her boot a knife.

The Senshi turned to her.

"This is an athame. It lets me....cut....between space and time. Easier for me than trusting to teleportation by others. I will meet you there." Staring at each other uncertainly, the Senshi teleported as a group, Moon and Titania in the lead, as Sureka quite literally took the knife and carved a circle in front of her. A kaleidoscopic light gleam in a circular pattern, gibbers and snarls echoing. Face as stone, she strode through. It was not her time to die yet if ever it came. And a decade beneath rock starving to death and resurrecting like clockwork inclined her to think if that couldn't, nothing ever truly would.

In the morgue of the Lunar Palace appeared all of the Senshi plus Titania and Tuxedo Kamen, and to their left appeared a great kaleidoscope-hued circle. Whispers echoed from the portal, whispers, screams, gibbering laughter. From it stepped the pale and rangy-looking Sureka, who nodded calmly, though Titania looked at her with a mixture of concern and fear. And recognition. Sureka did not care either way, as Titania with a knowledge honed by her visions went to a specific place, one that made Uranus and Neptune stiffen. The symbol there was that of Uranus's home planet. Of her castle, though she did not quite at this time grasp precisely what she saw or why the sense of familarity was powerful.

The slab opened, and to the Senshi and others, there was a sudden wave of horror.

"Her bones," murmured Hotaru, face white, lips moving enough for a hiss of air. "Why are her bones still here?"

The bones of the old Sailor Uranus remained intact, gleaming, the left arm mutilated well above the elbow, and it was Titania who stared for a time, a long time, with tears down her cheeks that matched those of Uranus and Neptune, before she visibly gathered herself and with supreme delicacy raised that broken humerus.

"This is why. From my visions and what I have learned through....through what is best seen as a kind of time travel, I have been able to pick up pieces of this. I do not know all of the truth and what I know may be incomplete. It began here in the 1960s. An American expedition to the Sea of Tranquility first found what it reported as an impossibly vast boneyard on the Moon. The jumbled corpses of both the Moon Kingdom and its enemies, waiting in the pages of time to resurrect when Beryl would be reborn and with her her enemies to challenge her. The astronauts could not resist curiosity at these bones, which even in a gravity-free environment would have become brittle, like so many mummies, but gleamed with a light they could not recognize. There were two skeletons apart from the rest."

Uranus and Neptune looked at each other in a dawning horror while the rest of the Senshi, including Setsuna, felt visibly ill and Sureka stared in horrified fascination.

"They took a bonesaw to one of the corpses, with no idea who it was, what it was, what they were doing."

She raised the bone again.

"It's because of this, in part, that the web of destiny that brought that monster here began. But not only this. They discovered here as well traces of strange alien monsters. Things like the thing in that building that are not of the Great Enemy in any of its forms. I do not know what name the old kingdom called them."

Sureka and Meiou spoke at once in a horrified unity.

"Architects of Fear."

"Maybe so. The dreams did not show me that. Entities that wore a visibly stylized armor like that of a flayed hide, of different species. They wielded great technology and they made a bargain with Queen Beryl shortly before the attack on the Lunar Palace. She wanted the power to make Senshi empowered by the same source that gave her her strength. So she took some kind of a machine from those creatures."

With that she placed the broken bone down, and closed the morgue, and for a time the Senshi stood in silence, as the Outer Senshi wept and the Inners, Moon, Tuxedo Kamen, and even Sureka were visibly nauseous at different levels and for different reasons.

"My guess is that it is more the machine than the existence of....of us," as her eyes met Uranus, "that drew it here. A machine that could reshape and alter flesh, turn seemingly ordinary genetics into superhuman ones."

They started. "The monsters...."

"The....daemons, yes. I suspect that whatever power animates them is akin to the device, perhaps a newer, keener form."

In the house of the dead her tale continued. "The United States and the Soviet Union, from my visions across time's expanse, were aware when the first carbon dating proved those bones to be an impossible ten thousand years old that there were strange things here, things that subverted all logic of civilization's nature and its origin. Things that showed irreconcilable elements with the simple mechanics of science. Things that were partially inhuman. In the only agreement of its kind, NATO and the Warsaw Pact sought to weaponize what they found."

A shadow passed over her face and for a moment her eyes seemed those of the old Mikaboshi, pools of darkness that greedily drank in the shadows.

"I suspect that they had no clear understanding of it, nor of the magic. At times they made things in between the ape and the man but with power that if they had broken out could have been horrifyingly destructive. By some strange alchemy that, and the shambling flesh-pile that was Subject Four had the greatest consciences of us all, and a power that was raw in its destructive force and potential. Battering ram, not rapier."

"There were a total of between twelve and fourteen subjects, I think. I was Subject Two. The giggling lunatic we fought, when I was still the Mikaboshi, she was Subject Three."

Her gaze turned to Tenoh Haruka.

"And you are Subject One, the perfect creation. A super-soldier made from the carcass of a Senshi, who cannot rest in peace, fully, until something happens. What it is, I don't know. The death of us? Of all of us? It can't be your death, you died in the Arctic. And it did not unmake them. They took her bones, and from it wrought monsters. I am no less a monster than the thing we slew before the clash with the Black Moon Clan. Somehow, impossibly, I have found a soul and a guardian realm to draw upon. But.....you are simultaneously a Senshi true and proper, and yet a weapon of science.

The project that worked worldwide across the blocs of the Cold War...." she bit her lip. "It was named Zarathrustra, for a prophet who built the first of the monotheistic religions, centered on fire. They made superhuman forces, using alien technology. I suspect that the device, or devices, have all been recovered by the monster in Pharaoh 90 Industries. It has hunted down and destroyed all of us, Uranus, except you and I. The last. The two sides of the same coin.

You, the hero, through and through. A person, perfect in every way. Yours the power of the Seven Winds. And in you, the Eighth who unifies and draws on the power of all the Wind Gods and Goddesses.

I.....like the lunatic, born without a soul. Born vengeful, and desperate. I took the bargain and the curse of the Ruinous Powers, and from this was delivered by Moon. Each base of Zarathrustra and all of its information were ransacked by the monster.

It wants us dead, Uranus. Us, personally. It has set itself a task, made itself seem a model global citizen, all for the sake that when it did what it did it would have the power to pull any strings it wishes. It does not matter if you are the perfect one, you are a product of devices used by its kind. And in this sense, you and I are the last skulls for its harvest...and then, I suspect, it will leave."

"You suspect?"

"I don't know. My vision anchors itself on a moment, Super Sailor Moon confronting the Architect of Fear in a destroyed building that burns with a deadly heat. Bodies strewn around them, gigantic and heavily armored, and some kind of decision is made on our fate. Something will happen, that building will be laid waste and the school with it, but up to that I see and no further in my own visions of myself."

Silence fell, oppressive.

"So what do we do?"

"We fight. We face the Architect of Fear, and we bring it down."

"How?" It was Venus who asked timidly. "I've seen one of these Zarathrustra-monsters. In Canada. In the Alkali Lake facility. They built something like.....like Bigfoot, vaguely. Neither beast nor man but in between. The monster came in fire and fury, strode through a fucking atom bomb to the face, and killed that monster. Nearly killed me."

She blanched. "I broke his shields and it made him mad, and it is only the power of the Senshi that has me alive at all."

"Its not invincible. It's not of the Great Enemy but our power can challenge it."

Titania nodded. "Challenge it, yes. And then it unleashes fuller power like it wants a fight, but less a fight and more of a boy pulling the wings off a fly for sport. If the fly stings back he steps on it with a boot of iron, or tries to."

Moon nodded.

"Well, I won't let it kill Haruka. Or you."

"Me?" Titania shrugged. "I was never meant to exist. I was rewarded, somehow, for being a monster in the service of the Powers, slaying foes of yours and of mine, ensuring that they had no traces. Given a true soul and all of this. To keep me is no gain, to lose me would be no loss."

Moon glared. "Don't say that. You're one of my Senshi, too." Her hand reached out to take Tuxedo Kamen's as he took hers in his. "He may be my prince, we may be destined for Chibiusa and Crystal Tokyo, but all of you are my Guardians. Your task may be to protect me, but mine is to veil the world in light and love. Love does not discard people like tools. Nor seek them nor see them that way."

Titania simply bowed her head and said nothing for a time.

Sureka looked at them, as she quietly closed the bay with the bones of the first Uranus.

She waited for a time more, then spoke quietly: "You are sure this thing is connected to them? The Architects of Fear?" 

"I believe so, yes. Why?"

"In M2, a few years after He suppressed the Dragon, He comes into contact with a group of these entities, during one of His wanderings through the voyages of space. They wield ships the size of mountains. The thing on the ship called itself 'Lord of the Weak Nuclear Force.' Its name was Shandrin Heshatani."

"Why does this matter?"

Sureka held up an image of the entity that He had encountered, an image from Eldar technology attached to her wrist. The thing was dark-skinned with golden eyes, a roseate pattern on both cheeks. It was bald, and the resemblance to the thing in Kenji's image had the Outers starting.

"I think it is a relative, or somehow connected to this."

With that, she pulled up the same kind of image that Kenji had, an image called by Him when He had sought to decipher elements of their foe.

Two faces held up, on the right the roseate-patterned clean-shaven being, on the left the one with six streaks like blood along its cheeks, eyes of brilliant golden hue, and the resemblance in cheekbones, jawline, and the hue of the facial pattern led the Senshi to stiffen still further.

"Not just descendants. I would wager they are at least uncle and nephew, if not father and son."

Sureka used a small bit of empathic pulsing to make the Eldar tech shut off.

"If so, we are in much graver difficulty than I thought and it more than justifies His return."

"Why?" Kamen's question was harsh, clipped.

"I'll tell you. Because that Lord of the Weak Nuclear Force he fought literally commanded one of those Fundamental Forces. It was a being that was an atom bomb in a flesh suit. He can make stars go off and on with His thought. That is what He is, and who He is."

She blanched.

"That thing commanded atomic fire in a way that matches only a creature of fantasy and science fiction." Taking a breath for a moment, she continued. "If such a being that commanded such power at such a level had children or relatives, it is not improbable whatever power they had would match it. And that, I believe, accounts for something of what we're facing."

"So....." it was Sailor Venus again. "We're not facing the Enemy. We're facing a telepath descended from a living atom bomb with the power to wipe our memories if it sees fit, to telepathically reach all around the world, and this thing is part of an organization of scientists with a name that sounds like the villains of a B-Movie franchise."

"They have more than earned that name."

"Oh. Well great, and here I was thinking we were going to have an easy task."

The Senshi and even Sureka snorted.

Then the Outer Senshi all stiffened at once, in that posture of an animal sensing a danger.

"It's in our-KENJI!" The first statement was said by all of the Outer Senshi, and the last a panicked shout from Haruka, who teleported instantaneously. With curses and headshaking, the rest of the Senshi followed her.

FIFTEEN MINUTES EARLIER:

After the Senshi had departed, Kenji took out a weapon his father had. His father, a rich fellow, though not as rich as the Senshi's family that he had gotten involved with, had his ways around Japan's stricter laws and owned a small arsenal of weaponry. His eccentricities let him take a Kalashkinov that he fully ensured was ready to fire. The monster knew, clearly, who the Senshi were. Did-

The door burst in with what would have been a knock otherwise, augmented by telekinetic force. He turned. Standing at the door was a being clad in flayed-hide like armor, metal carefully worked to replicate the shape of muscles and sinew, though it wore no helm. It was the thing from the cameras, standing there. Smiling at him.

 _ **Hello, boy.** _It spoke in that telepathic pulse of 'speech' that was heard in the mind, not the ear. Japanese in a perfectly erudite Tokyo accent.

_**You've been quite the enterprising fellow, young Nomura. You found a detail that I did not consider concealing and showed my quarry elements of my true face. Spoiled a surprise that I had preferred would be one.** _

With a casual display of his powers, the creature picked up the door and reattached it, though the glass in the windows remained shattered.

_**You're nothing but a Barane, one of these primitives of this world. In the rhetoric and diction of the society that spawned my order, your star is called Tamir. You, the children of its third planet, are a thing uncovered by accident in the coronation war of the Tyrant. In my home dimension, at least. To the Empire, you were entities whose presence was discovered by sheer grasping at straws of ancient Star-Generals in the dying days of the Age of Legend and probing a forbidden zone to see what, if anything, endured in truth from those days.** _

_**Not so to my order.** _

Kenji found himself raising the gun, his hands determined.

The creature smiled.

_**I wouldn't waste my time with that, boy. A fine weapon that is in your hands but consider: my mind reached into every mind on this planet, yours included, and I find that a trivial use of power. Breaking and repairing a door while speaking to you likewise is nothing. Next to that, freezing bullets in mid-air and turning them to either destroy your body or to simply drop on the ground, destructive force spent? Likewise nothing.** _

_**Sit.** _

With that force grasped Kenji in overpowering strength and he was forced onto the couch as the creature stood with its arms clasped behind its back.

_**Not an it, boy. You are the it to me. I am a member of the Order known as the Architects of Fear, now. Originally we had a greater and a grander name. The Architects of Fate, greater than Gods for we deciphered the power to make them. To produce localized suspensions of the laws of physics and produce the supernatural, things akin to what your race of savages calls superheroes. Our skill and the power of our creations grew and we revolutionized our world, but we became still greater and reserved the greatest such things for us. When the era of the Four Lords came, those legends began to be overriden with horror.** _

_**When the demons of Muspelheim that waged and lost a war came, we were recruited by the Emperor Vozhondil the Hunter, tasked to aid an Empire that was reeling for all its might. Against beings whose metaphysical mere shards are stars, even the Empire's tech was as nothing. We succeeded. We humbled a force that slays Gods. And for our success the old tales were overlaid with horror and we became the Architects of Fear, masters of dimensions uncounted...and exiles, hunted and persecuted by those of our ingratitude.** _

_**To us, the power to exert telekinetic force and accelerate a star to its death with as long or short taken there a matter of sheer psychic will, that is a true weight of my power. I can make the very fabric of the universe bow before me, and my willpower. Next to that? Next to that, boy, that little toy in your hands is just that. Your bullets cannot hurt me. Nothing in this world can. Only the Great Enemy of the Senshi in its various forms can, but it is a thing of many universes and many aeons, and it is a reminder that nothing in Existence is truly invincible. There are greater forces up to it that sits in its Halls beyond time with seven lights, and dons the mask that hides and comes down to mock and to destroy with the whim of the Dreamer that Gnaws as its force.** _

_**And you, boy, are not Chaos. Or anything close to it. You're a little boy who was caught in the desperate embrace of a reincarnating demigod that wished to defy her destiny, for she is the Seven Winds and not easily caught. That she loves you I do not doubt, for she is capable of it. More than her counterpart of the Ocean is for any save Uranus herself.** _

_**They were tied in the past, boy. In the past, from the notes of my precursors of the era of Hondon VII, they were lovers and Uranus was reputed to have been deeply in love with a prince until a daemon of the Powers ripped its way out of time and through his flesh and soul. And now history repeats itself. To you, a daemon out of time has come, and I seek to eliminate the monsters of the making of mortals who meddled with the machines of those your infinite greater, meddled...and made monsters. Your love, your precious Tenoh Haruka, is one of the last that I must and will slay.** _

_**I sent the message that she, and the other Senshi, are not safe in their school. I know their names and their faces. Of them all, only Mizuno and Aino and Tsukino have families of flesh and blood, and only the Ainos and the Tsukinos would be truly worth use as hostages. Or so I anticipated. And then you, boy, you occurred to me.** _

_**How better to send a message to the monster, to Subject One, that her clock is running out than to make the terrible cycle of fate repeat itself. As before, she shall not be present when her love is beset by an outside context problem.** _

With that his power pulsed outward, the boy raised up above the couch, as the creature smiled.

_**Farewell, Kenji Nomura. May the gods of your little primitive island chain welcome you to their embrace and your family go to your memory in the shrines of your squalid little cult.** _

With that he began to squeeze and compress, the power to break worlds against a mortal's body.

In a flash of light Uranus appeared with her sword, behind him. As the boy remained squeezed, he turned to her.

_**You don't die here, Uranus. You will be the capstone of my quest, and it is only fair that I let you see what was your true mother before you die in its sight of metal and esoteric elements handling divine power.** _

She shouted _Space Sword Blaster!_ the impact hurling Lord Pharaoh 90, the Architect of Fear, through the front walls of her house. His eyes widening with the first demonstration of the enhanced power of the new Super Senshi beyond Moon, he snarled and teleported away in a brilliant flash of light.

Behind him dropped the crushed body of Kenji, flattened in a way that would have seemed ludicrous otherwise, the force so powerful that it had literally compressed his body in ways that defied physics. It was not true gravitation or its equivalent, and being a force not of nature, did not truly obey nature's laws. Uranus turned and wept, as a memory flashed through of the past.

_"Susano!"_

_She held him, his body punctured by the thing whose destruction in a blast from her sword left his body with those great holes and the traces of its defiant aetheric bellow dying slowly._

_His blood splashed along her Fuku, and she wept, holding him and rocking him. For this, she had defied the course of destiny, the cycle set by her mother and by Neptune's. The cycle that had sealed them in the whims of fate and meant only Gods could sire the offspring of the two Guardian Senshi of Uranus and Neptune for no mortal man would, and Gods could defy laws of simple flesh, had seen her buck against it. She'd defied the love that defined her soul and he had welcomed it, welcomed her. Not as an object, not as the idea of hurting Neptune, but for herself._

_Such a reward for such a love._

And in that his eyes met her and in that horrified glimpse, Uranus froze. His eyes were the same as Kenji's. Susano, nobleman of the Storm-Kings of Jupiter, with his great sword Kusanagi that would become an heirloom of the Uranian monarchy and later find its way into the gullet of the Orochi and then into the treasures of Japan, reappearing in turn as the third generation of the Space Sword, had been reborn and met the same fate.

Uranus's hands brushed his body, and she wept again. Twice now she had tried to defy fate and those who had welcomed her met brutal deaths, reality correcting itself in a will of iron and blood. If some cruel fate ended this incarnation and its cycle, she would not do this a third time. If Neptune found her, she would welcome her, and they would be together. Just them. No more innocent people in the web of harsh fate slain by things that should not be.

Behind her arrived the Senshi and the eerie howling wind of Sureka's portal.

The Senshi were silent, heads bowed, and Neptune gazed at a scene that seemed to flash to her too out of memory in the days that were.

_"I'm sorry, Uranus. He did love you. For yourself. I thought it was that he wouldn't accept two women together and tried to steal you from me."_

_"No-one could, Neptune. We are fated to be together. For just a moment......I wanted something for me. Not Fate. It takes so much from us, why this, too? He was just a man, he could never replace you."_

_In that look, Uranus's fuku smeared in blood and her eyes teary, and in stains of blood Neptune held Uranus, and destiny's wheels turned as Susano was forgotten in all save the name that became that of the Kami of storms, brother of Amaterasu of the Sun, the Grand Duke of the Storm-Kingland becoming the Kami of thunder and lightning._

As before it was Neptune who strode to Uranus, weeping over the course of history and its merciless path. 

This time, she simply put her arms around Uranus's shoulder only for Haruka to turn to her and weep more profoundly, the memories overwhelming her. As before, her visions had proven true. No more worries, no more annoyance that where she let fate take its due from them for the love of Haruka, that Uranus had a courage Neptune did not and tried to defy Fate. Only sorrow, for in the end even if she had never tolerated his presence, let alone liked him, he had never done more than kissed her and had soothed Haruka's needs at first in a way that time would give her that ability to do so.

"My hands are stained in blood," Uranus whispered, as Saturn knelt by Kenji and quietly placed him in a field to take him to the morgue, where she would note his death simply as 'alien attack.'

The other Senshi stepped out of the house, Moon and Venus using their power to simply repair it, and they waited together.

"In blood, Michi. Yours, mine. His. Two lifetimes. I ran away from a love that fate willed for me because I was selfish. I wanted something to be Haruka's in both lifetimes, not that of the immortal soldier."

"You weren't selfish, Ruka. You were bold, courageous. Reckless. You wanted to try to defy fate. You did."

She looked at the place where....his body...wasn't.

"You didn't betray me. You kissed me, you told me you loved me. I begrudged him that he touched you at all, not that something in you spoke to this. You did this before, in the Silver Millennium. A different kind of foe destroyed him, but......"

Uranus blinked and nodded, her eyes still teary.

"That thing won't kill me. Or any of us. When this is over...." she looked out.

"Setsuna loves Hotaru as much as we do. She can look after her, for a time. I want to go out, you and me. To see the world. I have run from fate enough. You have loved me from when I first saw you, and I you likewise. It was why....why he and and I never...."

She blinked, sighing sadly.

"Because I was selfish my hands are stained in blood."

Her gloves were red, in memory and rimmed with a strange frost produced by the effects of Titania's presence. Michiru carefully removed her gloves, and kissed her fingertips.

"I like your hands, Ruka."

"He showed us enough that we know what's coming for us. I don't care what he calls himself, or itself. We will avenge him, and all your sisters."

"Sisters?"

'Whatever things Zarathrustra made. They weren't you, but they were people, caught up in a web they could not understand. We will defeat him, even kill him......and in that, hopefully, their spirits and that of the first Uranus can rest."

Silence prevailed with them, for hours, before a red-faced and puffy-eyed Haruka returned with Neptune. No more of her rebellion. Fate had won. 

THE OUTSKIRTS OF TOKYO, SOUTH OF MOUNT ASAMA:

The first contact of mortal humans with transhuman dread and entities approximating the form and shape of the Adeptus Astartes, proud sons of the IV Legion Iron Warriors, tossed in space and time, came after that thunderous impact. The Astartes had not lingered on the mountain but made their way into the forest. A powerful Psyker presence had wrapped its arms around the world, though it did not rely on the Warp. The filthy xenos had bored its way into their minds too. That knowledge, that weakness, led to a blend of powerful killing urge and to penance, penance done in the shadows of the forest.

They detected the presence of both Sailor Titania (a presence with elements of Psyker power that intensified but a holy and clean power akin to their secretive and reclusive brethren of Titan, the Grey Knights) and the daemon. A lesser psyker power akin to the greater that made it. The holy presence banished the filthy xenos one with a swift and brutal fight, and so they made no effort to help her. It was the squad's Librarian, Brother Diogenes, who had identified not only where they were but when they were, when they had taken a moment to take stock in the forest. They had salvaged all their ammunition, enough rounds for a fight on an Orc moon. To an eye of Old Earth they would have been monstrously oversized tanks, the Terminator armor that wreathed them all shaped by the direct hands of their Father, Warmaster Perturabo himself.

Tanks with bandoliers that made them seem nothing so much as tanks that had somehow had lovechildren with a Hollywod Mexican bandito.

Brother Diogenes, whose crystalline hood made him unlike his brethren, had deciphered it when staring at a tree. There was writing, ancient writing. The earliest tongue of the Dragon Nations of the Unity Era, very early.

"Impossible," he gasped. But it was true, he could feel it. This air was cleaner, water and less redolent of age and decay and the Warp-presence of both. And water, precious water, that thing devoured in the Warp-hordes of creatures like Kalagann and Dume, water so present in the air and yet so palatable to the human or the trans-human that there was only one place, one time this could have been.

"Brothers," he spoke in Olympian. "We are on Old Earth. In M2. In one of the Dragon countries. By the presence of that mountain and the forest, and the maps from my old companion among the Thousand Sons, most probably Nihon."

He pointed to the city just visible beyond the forest. "I suppose that is Tokio-Edo, the great capital city."

"Old Earth?" It was grizzled Kadatheon, the squad's heavy weapons specialist. "How can that be?" 

"A sick joke of the Orks or more probably of the Great Enemy. Cast us away from our father and our brethren here. Where everyone we know is not dead but never came to be. We must not disrupt that past, and we must have been forgotten in it all."

"As long as our presence doesn't disrupt the Emperor's great dream...." mused one of the tactical Marines, a new recruit of the highlands of Olympia.

It was then that they heard the growl of an ancient armored vehicle. It had six wheels and looked vaguely rhomboidal, loosely akin to the great tanks of their own days, but it was no tank. More like a land raider.

The vehicle paused, and a soldier of M2, a baseline human, opened a hatch and stared. He saw things looking at him from the forest, vast and hulking things. Swollen monsters clad in bloated armor, things that were vaguely akin to men but with faces that were oversized and scarred. Transhuman dread was not a true thing yet, even the Senshi would be immune to it until the coming of Galaxia three years later. But here, in this time, meeting the faces of twenty such posthuman monstrosities, his mind froze, incapable of grasping what he was seeing.

One of them stepped out, clad in a crystalline hood, and its eyes gleamed with a bright blue light as frost rimmed the Type 96.

 **++You did not see us.++** The speech was in the mind, Japanese spoken as he spoke it in his home region of Kyushu.

With that he and his crew drove off, as the Iron Warriors watched the vehicle leave. With that, they decided that they might as well seek to move to Tokyo, to try to find and beard a xenos Alpha level Psyker in its lair. There were plenty of tasks they relished less.

This time, when they got closer to Tokyo, they were met not by one personnel carrier, but by a full strength force of Type 90 tanks, more personnel carriers, infantry, all of them ringing the Astartes.

"Well, now what?"

With that, the Librarian, one of the few among the Iron Warriors to rival the baseline skills of the Thousand Sons, projected his will as frost rimmed the weapons and the infantry shivered and clouded the sights of the armor and the armored personnel carriers.

**++We are allies, we come in peace from the far future.++**

"What are you?"

**++The angels of death, made by the Emperor, Lord and Master of all Mankind. We are the scourge of the alien, the mutant, the heretic.++**

"The alien?" It was the highest ranking officer, a two-star general, who spoke then.

"You don't look human,"

**++We are warriors, augmented by power from the Emperor.++**

Murmurs followed, but it was the two-star general who spoke over something like a very primitive, crude vox, who ultimately decided things.

"I will take you to the Chief of Staff. He will decide what, if anything, we make of you."

 **++Acceptable.++** With that the greasy ozone-charged element in the air passed, and twenty Iron Warriors were escorted by two main battle tanks and armored personnel carriers, striding through a Tokyo in Martial Law, staring with wonder and rapt awe at the lost splendors of Old Earth. Brother Diogenes tensed during the journey, then tensed once more. He felt that same Psyker again, in a place some leagues away, and its power was as intense on the smaller as on the bigger scale. But....there was another presence. The Master of Mankind Himself, and He was not far from his time-lost Grandsons.

The other Astartes did not need his Warp-senses to know That presence was there, they knew it was Him. And it was consciousness of the light of the Emperor and His great vision that made them stop gawking and transform into the stern and pragmatic and destructive forces of their father, seeking to do the cold and statistics-minded Warmaster proud.

So was it that the sons of Olympia came to the Joint Staff command structure in the heart of Tokyo, in Chiyoda Ward.

It was not far from the Diet building and awe, superstitious awe, and oaths of forgotten heathen gods spilled from the lips of the sons and daughters of old Earth, for the Iron Warriors were able to easily match the slow pace of their escorts that mistook them for powerful exemplars of regular humanity.

In that pattern, thus was it that the Tactical Lieutenant, Basil of Squad Bulgaroktonos, met the Chief of Staff of the Self Defense Forces, Natsukawa Kazuya. Where most of the humans yielded to transhuman dread, the Admiral was of sterner stuff, and he did not quail, appraising all twenty of the monster-men carefully. These were not the monsters that had stalked nights nor the destructive power that had flashed briefly into existence, it was theorized, near Mount Asama and attacked that school. These were soldiers, grim and bloody-looking, an aura of menace and power exuding from them.

He could use men like this. Especially if his subordinate's report was correct. Soldiers, very powerful soldiers, superhuman soldiers. Not Senshi, who specifically focused on alien threats. Yes, very potentially useful indeed.


	43. Time and its courses:

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Iron Warriors of Squad Bulgaroktonos encounter the new/old xenos threat directly when Lord Pharaoh 90 dispatches a pair of daemons to test their skills. Lord Pharaoh 90 continues to set his plans in motion at further levels.

JGSDF HEADQUARTERS:

Squad Bulgaroktonos learned with rapt fascination of both the nature of the xenos contact, the Librarian carefully fltering the ancient pre-Gothic tongue into the tongue of all humanity in M32, or at least that of the considerable IV Legion subset of it. An alien, a strange xenos monster, had indeed reached out to batter its way into the minds of humanity and dispatched monsters, images of which were seen by them and marked within their helms and their new databases. The creatures were seemingly vaguely humanoid, having proportions roughly akin to humanity. Their skin was bright red, they had six eyes, tremendous psychic power, and were claimed to be enormously strong and fast.

There was a greater mind at work that unleashed the lesser monsters, though its nature was ill-determined to them or to those of the world at present. It had assaulted multiple of the societies of ancient Earth, and had done so in superlatively destructive fashion. A facility known as Alkali Lake had even seen the deployment of the most powerful destructive potential known to M2, The creature had taken a direct impact from a high-yield atomic with no ill effect, though its precise shape was ill-determined besides seeming to have an Ork-like heft on a human-like body and enough psychic heft to match or even exceed that of the Primarch of the Thousand Sons. 

A single set of camera images in Japan had caught an image of it, and the image of a dark greyish creature with golden eyes, streaks like claw-marks down its cheeks, and bright white teeth shining in a squat-nosed face with deep brow-ridges haunted the Astartes. An unholy kind of xenos, made the more unholy by its resemblance to a warped and deformed version of the human form. This was the thing they'd come to kill. Twenty Astartes, even with one of the more powerful Psykers in the Warmaster's own Legion, against a thing that easily matched or exceeded the Crimson King.

A low whistle that came across the vox like a snarl echoed from their lips. They certainly didn't think small.

The next two days saw them begin patrols inducted in a sense into the Japanese Self-Defense Forces, the Libriarian muttering something to the effect of "If only Atharva could have seen this."

PHARAOH 90 INDUSTRIES, TWO DAYS LATER:

On his command throne, Lord Pharaoh 90 saw the Squad of Astartes, and their fashion of motion, a small nano-tech cloud giving him full specifics. Astartes. Creatures of a particular kind of future rife for raiding at the edges of an immense galaxy of horrors. The skull and the hazard stripes and the archaic numeral IV indicated.... ** _Ferrum Militates. Iron Warriors. Why them, I wonder? Would have been more amusing with the Twelfth or the Second, what bastards those Astartes were._ **

_**They don't belong in this time**_ , he mused in thoughtspeech, and then smiled. _**Time to test the future, I suppose. Subjects Three and Four, go forth and challenge those vermin. Destroy them or do not return.**_

Both of the creatures stepped onto the teleportation ring, and in a flash of light vanished.

With that, Lord Pharaoh 90 stood and cracked his neck. One of his two remaining quarry had gone to that track, for simple busy-work.

His charcoal-grey face broke into a wide grin. How delightful, perhaps this would permit him to keep his quarry grounded rather than hopping around the world and giving himself perhaps an extra fifteen minutes of work.

RACE TRACK, TOKYO: 

Under the rules of the martial law in Tokyo in the wake of the First Contact, as the event was now being directly named worldwide, there were no races in Japan, for a time. That didn't stop Tenoh Haruka from heading to the racetrack to fiddle with her racecar, working with the pit crew. They were all there for the same reason, and her bodyguards were a blend of sitting and drinking or standing and watching, alternating in each case with a wary vigilance. It was a quiet day and next to no-one knew about it, and they were not alone on the track.

Only other racers, likewise restless and needing a break in tension, were there. At first.

Just beyond the track a brilliant sphere of light formed and from it stepped a being clad in flayed-hide armor whose eyes were a bright yellow in a charcoal-grey face. With a thought his shape and appearance seemed to become that of a squat and burly German in a three-piece suit, and he adjusted his tie.

With a cold smile on his face that did not reach his eyes, Irving Christoffels strode onto the track, using his power casually to ward away any undue attention paid to his appearance, and as such seemed to materialize out of nowhere facing Tenoh Haruka's bodyguards. Keeping the minds of others from seeing what he did not wished seen, the guards stood up and as one raised pistols in his direction. 

_**Gentlemen, please**_. The voice they heard speaking from thought was no human voice, and its presence was monstrously strong, echoing with amusement and contempt. Tenoh Haruka's face whirled around in fear and anger.

 _ **You can't hurt me, so what do your bullets matter**_. With that he cocked his head and they all gasped in shock as they dropped their guns, which were simultaneously moved to safety mode in the time it took Irving to blink. 

**_Sleep, gentlemen, this is not between you and I._ **

With that everyone else on the track, including the other racers and pit crew fell suddenly into a deep and total slumber, leaving Tenoh Haruka facing no less a force than the monster that had slain her boyfriend in her own house not so long ago.

_Uranus Planet Power Make-up! Protected by Uranus, The Outer Planet of Wind, Guardian of the Heavens. I am Sailor Uranus._

In a blinding flash of light the racer was gone and the Senshi of the Seven Winds stood, clutching her talisman that gleamed with brilliant gems worked into the hilt. The alien monster smiled at her, and it was not a kind smile, 

_**Gone from the arms of your lover to the cold elements of a machine, mm? How cold-hearted of you!** _

_Space Sword Blaster!_

With that her blast struck out at the creature that smiled and this time summoned a more formidable shield that cracked the ground beneath him and held, if barely, the attack, the creature sniffing with disdain.

_**Oh come now, dear. Every other one of your kind but one other is dead, and all of them but one died by my hands. Others commanded aspects of the Seven Winds. They fell before me, and so too shall you fall in time.** _

_**You have seen me crush flat a little boy that you were somehow involved with. You, Uranus, tied to Neptune in the past and in the present and rebelling with a man. My, what success, and what reward your love brought him. A visit from that which strode in from the stars. Death that could not be fought nor resisted, only crushing that which it sought to grasp. I battered my way into your mind and into that of all your fellow Senshi with ease and contacted you all as if it were nothing. I could, if so I wished, extend that** **touch to draw into it every human and lower form of life in Japan and send them against you in hostility.**_

_**But.....**_ he smiled, in that same cold fashion, eyes gleaming with malice. _**I find that to be a waste of time. You are fortunate, child. I am not here to conquer or to indulge in my usual excesses. Where I tread in worlds higher in technology and grasp of the universe around them than this, I have left families broken and the survivors hanging and shooting and setting themselves alight after dousing themselves in that which fuels flames. I make those who favor their own sexes take that which they do not desire to take in truth, I make fathers and mothers and sisters and brothers slake lusts upon each other for naught beyond my own amusement. I have slaked my own desires on others, others closer in kindred to my kind, or my species across eternity.** _

He strode close to Haruka then, his flayed-hide gauntlet caressing the side of her face with the back brushing against her cheek, Haruka shivering, those brilliant yellow eyes seeming to burn into her soul. **_I know you love Neptune, girl, and that she adores you and has suffered in silence your rebellion knowing how it would end._ **

His smile became genuinely affable but a sense of menace stalked his words, amplified by a gloating amusement.

_**I could make you hate her, I could take all those memories of your destiny and your past life from you, and destroy them as though they had never been.** _

An invisible grip held her tight in a vice, as quietly behind the monster the briny odor of the ocean pervade the sleeping tracks. The alien's nose twitched.

_**Would you not like this? You rebelled with a man, after all. Would you not like to be fixed, to become a normal child who welcomed the normal desires and caresses of a woman of your wealth and stature?** _

Uranus shouted: "I'll kill you."

_**No, child. You will not.** _

The alien's hand moved from her cheek down her neck, the right gauntlet sliding around it comfortably, and Uranus realized for the first time that the creature had enormous physical strength beneath the rest of his powers, and she looked at it warily, seeing Neptune raising her mirror behind him and seeking to keep his attention focused on her.

**_You will not harm me, nor even scratch my armor. But I......I will kill you. I owe you a clean death, at least._ **

That hand was around her throat and the gloating element was matched by a smile that did reach his eyes.

 ** _You and the thing that calls itself Titania are the last. I shan't kill you yet as I need to be sure of a few things. There are other factors that have entered the play here, things that are not of this world, or of this time, and they must be managed and prevented from...interfering. So tell me, Uranus. You who run from destiny as the Seven Winds you are the embodiments thereof, would you not welcome freedom for all time from its embrace as the price of your deliverance?_**  
  
"I love Neptune," growled Uranus. "I do not want freedom from her. I wanted something for me, but that never meant I did not love her."

 _ **I can fix that,**_ purred the creature as his telepathic power shattered her mental wards and Uranus screamed at the sensation of the alien presence in her mind and her memories, even as Neptune raised her violin and smiled, the warmth of Uranus's words amplified by the fearful aspects of her screams and the monster's promises.

 _Submarine Violin Tide!_ Her violin began to rhapsodize great harmonies, and a vast briny odor pervaded the track. The being turned his head and his eyes widened. A veritable tsunami empowered by the mystic might of the ocean collided into him, hurling him clear out of the track, beyond Tokyo itself, flattening himself against a mountain.

Haruka fell, still clad as Uranus, and shuddered, curled up and crying, bruises forming around her neck. A few seconds later Saturn appeared as out of nowhere and laid her hand against Uranus's throat and in a small pulse of glowing energy the bruises healed and the tears stopped, Uranus holding Michiru for a time. Yet even if the creature had been hurled beyond Tokyo by the blast, those who had been knocked unconscious remained so. It gave the Senshi time to hold each other, to whisper words of reassurance, for Michiru to whisper into her ear that "I love you and nothing will ever, ever change that" and for Haruka to hold her, still crying a bit and relieved that everything had gone that way.

Then she stood up, detransforming into her track suit and Saturn hammered the haft of her glaive on the ground and the people on the track awakened from what seemed a strange daydream as if no time at all had passed.

Haruka shuddered. That thing wanted her dead, and she grasped that it was toying with them all, somehow, still.

NORTHERN TOKYO, PATROL ROUTE OF SQUAD BULGAROKTONOS:

The Squad of Astartes were moving quietly in a standard formation, pondering over the information they'd seen, and over the strange seeming quiescence of the xenos threat. Then three things happened at once. First a monstrously powerful psychic force extended its presence outwardly and actively, and they all froze. That power was awesome but it relied on neither iteration of Chaos and was a sign of the malevolent aspect of the Xenos presence in question. Then two more such presences, ones that would have been awesomely formidable in the Warp and shared that same signature of power that was awesome in scale and not focused on it, or what the beings of M2 called Chaos (though this remained something of which they were ignorant at the time).

Two such entities strode out. They were clad in a kind of hard shell like plate armor, but beneath that shell their flesh was a reddish hue, though not as red as the creatures of the Blood God. Their eyes were black within shale within black, and their mouths parted to reveal over-wide fanged leers.

The creatures sought to communicate with their minds, but the Iron Warriors immediately moved into a combat formation, raising bolters, chainswords, and a fifth of their number thumbed runes that activated the fields of Power Swords.

**++In the name of the Lord and Master of Mankind, you are not welcome here, on the sacred rock of Old Earth.++ Their Librarian's voice was powerful and the creatures did not seem deterred by it, nor afraid, only increasing their leers.++**

_In the name of Lord Pharaoh 90, the Architect of Fear, we don't care._

With that the creatures blinked and stupendous psychic force hurled out toward the Astartes.

A sudden spike of warning from the Librarian, who raised a kine shield that crackled into visible elements followed as the Astartes with swords prepared to move. The impact in turn hurled the Librarian backward, though he stopped his fall against a building, which cracked all the way to its roof with the impact of Terminator armor. The creatures smiled bur by then the Astartes were in motion.

Four Astartes each sought to lunge at the creatures while others provided covering fire. The bolter shells were suspended in mid-air with a lazy blink and a savage smile, then hurled back toward the Astartes who fired them, who swiftly moved out of the way.

One of the Terminator-clad Iron Warriors collided into the telekinetic defensive field and seemed to slam into thin air, followed by the rest, as the entities smiled coldly again and then pushed outward with the field, one of them levitating with eyes sparking.

_Our creator did not use the power of unclean things to make us. Merely a few odds and ends of his father's work. We are but the least of the works of the Architects of Fear, and you the greatest of your time!_

By then the Librarian had returned and from both of his gauntlets flashed sudden blasts of lightning, the one on the ground seeking to shield herself from it. The lightning shattered the shield with brute force and collided into her, hurling her back as her flesh smoked.

**++You were saying?++**

The creature in the air turned to him with six glowing eyes and then beams of fire seemed to lance out from them, colliding with his telekine shield, both bursting with a tremendous explosion that rocked the Librarian to his knees and hurled her from the sky.

"Your powers hurt them, Brother. A shame that we have only the one Librarian."

With that the keen minds of Astartes were geared to grasping weaknesses, and at least potential means to exploit them.

The fight that followed would last for three hours of mortal time and it was brutal and savage, blood running from the armor of all the Astartes, though no truly grievous or irreparable wounds the Emperor's gifts could not repair were given. The destruction of a third of their bolters was far more grievous, especially in the past where they could not be readily replaced, yet the price of that was a power sword through the belly skewering one of them, and the Librarian's power filling that one's body to bursting point in a brilliant flash of light, as the other snarled. It was a fight to rival that of the fabled engagement on the world called Murder, an engagement of brutal and total swiftness. Limbs moved, armor cratered, blood running, the thing dancing out of strikes at times and enduring direct hits from the bolters with no more than light charring and no visible concussive damage....and then physically turning to lift an Astartes up by the gorget and hurl them in the air like a rag-doll, the smile of triumph the one that was followed by that impalement.

Their Battle-Brother hurled in the air in the last desperate seconds of the clash with the one was caught in a psychic grip, but not that of the other with its malevolent grin. It was a grip that was.....they blinked, a sense of familiar power pervading that grip.

Then they felt Him, and His presence in M2 was somehow far more superlatively powerful than in the War of the Beast, when He had emerged from his long sorrows after the great Heresy and sought to reclaim elements of the Galaxy. He was as He was then, clad in brilliant armor that looked like gold but was not truly gold, a giant taller than their father, eyes of brilliant burning gold matching the hue of the flaming sword in his right hand.

The creature that stood before Him turned to Him and laughed until the laughter choked off with a single motion of the sword and its severed head fell from its body.

The Astartes found themselves compelled to kneel before His majesty, and He looked at them with a gesture far more human and less stoic than they were used to seeing on the face and presence of the Master of Mankind.

"My grandsons," He spoke not with words of thought but of lips. "Here, in M2, at the dawn of the first age of glory of humanity. How came you to be here?"

It was the Lieutenant, whose arms ran with the bright red blood of the Astartes, who spoke humbly not in the thought-speech rendered into English but in Gothic, the High Gothic of the Legions:

"We were tossed through a storm, great Lord."

"A Warp storm?"

"Aye. In M32, during the assault on the Ork Moon over Terra."

The Emperor's right eye widened slightly. His visions had narrowed to a point when the Warmaster would come to Terra, when the world would burn with fire, and there seemed to be nothing. Confirmation that His dream would endure that scourge and trial gave Him a wolfish aura of confidence that increased very strongly a similarity in manner to he who would become the Lupercal in the far future.

His grandsons remained kneeling before Him, making oaths of Olympia and the IV Legion to come, until He told them:

"Rise, my grandsons. There is one who is important to Me, and she has gone to be with others, protectors against Chaos." He smiled, and on His face the expression was horrifying, an expression that even with his full humanity did not quite suit such a face.

"I will get her back soon enough. For now....I ask that you and I go together. There are beings I will introduce to you, who will serve as your allies in times to come." 

With that His power veiled them in a form more like that of baseline humans, albeit very tall and burly ones, clad in an outfit akin to that of the Greek Army, and they followed Him to the Shinto shrine known as the Hikawa Shrine. His own form shifted to that of a baseline human in appearance, albeit one clad in the outfit of a colonel in the aforementioned army, though His eyes never lost that brilliant psychic hue.

To His utter lack of surprise He saw waiting for him a tall woman as dark as He was with dark greenish hair and bright red eyes.

"Why are you here, Perkwunos?"

"Ah....Pluto, how charming to see you," His voice held an oily politeness.

As He prepared to speak, Neptune teleported over with Uranus, or more precisely a beautiful woman with aqua hair in a blouse and knee length pleated skirt teleported in with a woman who was strikingly beautiful in her own right with close-cropped hair and wearing a....suit. His eye raised for a moment before he internally facepalmed. Japanese school uniforms.

His gaze turned to Uranus, and then Pluto stepped toward her protectively to block His sight.

"Oh Meiou, please. Don't waste our time with this. You know as well as I do what when I want something there is no stopping Me."

"Not here, not now."


End file.
